Discoveries that could help diabetics titled in honour of activist and journalist murdered in Amazon
Scientists in Brazil have found two new species of fermenting yeasts and named them after journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira, the two men murdered last year in the Amazon rainforest.
The discovery came from four isolates of the Spathaspora species, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.
Continue reading...Satellites show record destruction for the month of February as new government tries to undo damage wreaked under Bolsonaro
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose in February to the highest level on record for the month, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as it tries to undo the environmental destruction wreaked under the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Government satellites show that a record 322 sq km of Amazon rainforest were destroyed in February, a 62% increase on last year and the highest number for the month since records began.
Continue reading...Bolivian man says it helped that he knew survival techniques after becoming separated from friends on hunting trip in January
A Bolivian man who claimed to have been missing in the Amazon alone for a month has recounted eating insects and worms, collecting water in his boots and drinking his own urine to stay alive.
If confirmed, this could make Jhonatan Acosta, 30, one of the longest-ever lone Amazon survivors.
Continue reading...Study adds to fears Amazon is approaching tipping point after which it will not be able to generate its own rainfall
For the first time researchers have proven a clear correlation between deforestation and regional precipitation. Scientists hope it may encourage agricultural companies and governments in the Amazon and Congo basin regions and south-east Asia to invest more in protecting trees and other vegetation.
The study found that the more rainforests are cleared in tropical countries, the less local farmers will be able to depend on rain for their crops and pastures.
Continue reading...Authorities have blamed the growing of coca – the base ingredient of cocaine – for clearcutting, but a recent study shows otherwise
Cattle-ranching, not cocaine, has driven the destruction of the Colombian Amazon over the last four decades, a new study has found.
Successive recent governments have used environmental concerns to justify ramping up their war on the green shrub, but the research shows that in 2018 the amount of forest cleared to cultivate coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, was only 1/60th of that used for cattle.
Continue reading...Victims – among them environmental defender Edwin Chota – were tortured before their deaths in Peruvian Amazon in 2014
Five illegal loggers in Peru have been given 28-year jail sentences for the murder of four Indigenous leaders, among them the prominent anti-logging campaigner Edwin Chota, in a rare win for environmental justice.
Nearly eight years after the 2014 quadruple murder, a court in Pucallpa in the Peruvian Amazon found the loggers, Eurico Mapes Gómez and the brothers Segundo and Josimar Atachi Félix, guilty of aggravated homicide against the leaders, and sentenced them on Thursday to 28 years and three months in prison.
Continue reading...Special forces destroy aircraft and seize weapons in effort to protect largest Indigenous reserve from mining mafias
The Brazilian government has launched its campaign to drive tens of thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous reserve, with special-forces environmental operatives destroying aircraft and seizing weapons and boats during an operation deep in the Amazon’s Yanomami territory.
Members of Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama – with support from the Indigenous agency Funai and the newly created ministry for Indigenous peoples – launched the long-awaited operation on Monday, with troops establishing a base along the Uraricoera river. Wildcat tin ore and gold miners use the waterway – as well as dozens of illegal airstrips – to reach and supply their illegal outposts in Yanomami lands.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Environment minister calls for ex-president to be held to account as she prepares to tackle illegal gold miners
Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.
In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.
Continue reading...Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages have weakened resilience of 2.5m sq km of forest, says study
Human activity and drought may have degraded more than a third of the Amazon rainforest, double the previous estimate, according to a study that heightens concerns that the globally important ecosystem is slipping towards a point of no return.
Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages, have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5m sq km of the forest, an area 10 times the size of the UK. This area is now drier, more flammable and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of “megafires” in the future.
Continue reading...Move comes after country’s minister for Indigenous people says issue is an ‘absolute priority’
Brazil’s first-ever minister for Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, has vowed to make tackling the humanitarian crisis plaguing the country’s largest Indigenous territory “an absolute priority”, as she prepared to fly into the region with the new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Under the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, thousands of illegal gold miners poured into the Yanomami enclave in the Amazon, bringing violence, pollution and a healthcare calamity captured in a recent series of photographs of severely malnourished children and adults.
Continue reading...Ministry for Indigenous peoples is created but new government faces huge challenges from Bolsonaro era
Two internationally celebrated Amazon defenders, Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara, have been named as ministers in Brazil’s new government in an attempt to contain the intensifying assault on Indigenous territories and the environment.
The announcement was made by incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will take office on Sunday after the country’s four years of rainforest-wrecking under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...Proposal to dismantle existing reserves for ‘uncontacted’ Indigenous groups quietly pushed amid ongoing political chaos
Amid the political chaos following the ousting of Peru’s President Pedro Castillo, lawmakers in the country’s congress are quietly trying to pass a bill into law that would strip “uncontacted” Indigenous people of protection and dismantle existing reserves created for them.
The bill proposes to modify a 2006 law protecting Indigenous peoples in “isolation” and “initial contact” – those living with little or no contact with the outside world – in order to halt the creation of new reserves and eliminate existing ones, of which there are seven in Peru’s Amazon.
Continue reading...The activist for native peoples says she will work to overturn the ‘catastrophic legacy’ from Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency
The activist tipped to become Brazil’s first-ever minister for native peoples has vowed to make the demarcation of Indigenous lands and the battle against environmental crime top priorities in an attempt to overcome Jair Bolsonaro’s “catastrophic legacy” of Amazon devastation and violence.
Sônia Guajajara, a key member of Brazil’s burgeoning Indigenous rights movement, is widely expected to be named head of the ministry, which president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to create during his campaign.
Continue reading...President’s predecessor Bolsonaro unleashed record destruction and emboldened loggers, land grabbers and illegal miners
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s narrow victory over President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s October elections was hailed as the potential salvation of the Amazon, after four years of unbridled destruction which have brought the rainforest close to a tipping point, threatening the very survival of the Indigenous populations whose lives depend upon it.
Lula has vowed to reverse the environmental destruction wreaked under his far-right predecessor and work towards zero deforestation by tackling crime in the Amazon and guaranteeing the protection of Indigenous rights. But the president-elect, who takes office on 1 January 2023, faces an uphill battle to meet these big promises he has made to the Brazilian people and the international community.
Continue reading...President-elect says he will work to save Amazon rainforest and key ecosystems in rousing Cop27 speech
President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the world that “Brazil is back” at Cop27, vowing to begin undoing the environmental destruction seen under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and work towards zero deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
Followed by a carnival atmosphere wherever he went on Wednesday, Lula told the climate summit that his administration would go further than ever before on the environment by cracking down on illegal gold mining, logging and agricultural expansion, and restoring climate-critical ecosystems.
Continue reading...Leaders from Achuar and Wampis peoples say Petroperú is responsible for spills in their territory
Native leaders from the Peruvian Amazon are to travel to the US this week to lobby banks to cut financial ties with Peru’s state oil company, Petroperú.
Leaders from the Achuar and Wampis peoples say the state company is responsible for oil spills in their territory that violate their human rights by polluting their water sources and irreparably damaging their fishing and hunting grounds.
Continue reading...Spurred by Lula’s election, the three countries, home to half of all tropical forests, will pledge stronger conservation efforts
The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.
The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...About 70 people seized in protest at environmental damage from crude oil spillage into Cuninico River
Indigenous people in the Amazon in Peru have detained a group of Peruvian and foreign tourists, including UK and US citizens, in protest at a lack of government aid following an oil spill in the area.
“[We want] to call the government’s attention with this action, There are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo, the leader of the Cuninico community, told RPP radio.
Continue reading...After four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right rule, Lula da Silva says his first priority will be helping the 100 million Brazilians living in poverty
The euphoria of an election victory is fleeting and while many Brazilians will wake up with a hangover after celebrating the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro, president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will soon have his own headaches to deal with.
Lula takes power on 1 January 2023 and will be charged with rebuilding and reuniting a nation that has been left damaged and bitterly divided after four years of Bolsonaro’s anarchic far-right policies.
Continue reading...Veteran leftist Lula da Silva holds slender poll lead over Jair Bolsonaro as national divide grows before Sunday vote
The two political heavyweights vying to become Brazil’s next president have locked horns during the final television debate before a momentous election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the global climate emergency and the future of one of the world’s largest democracies.
The former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro faced off in Rio at the studios of Brazil’s biggest broadcaster, with eve of election polls giving Lula a slender but not unassailable lead.
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