Category Archives: Deforestation

Brazil says illegal miners driven from Indigenous territory, but ‘war’ not over

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Country’s top cop said 90% of miners despoiling Yanomami land had been expelled, though experts say they are only displaced

Brazil’s top federal police chief for the Amazon has celebrated the government’s success in driving thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous territory but warned the “war” against environmental criminals is not yet over.

Speaking during a visit to the Amazon city of Belém, Humberto Freire estimated environmental and police special forces had expelled 90% of the 20,000 miners who had been devastating the protected Yanomami territory, since launching their clampdown in February.

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Amazon facing ‘urgent’ drug crisis after gutting of protections, says narcotics chief

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Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation

The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.

Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

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An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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‘Journalism mustn’t be silenced’: colleagues to complete slain reporter’s book

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How to Save the Amazon will be published so Dom Phillips’ work telling the stories of rainforest defenders does not die with him

One year after Dom Phillips was killed in the Brazilian Amazon, friends and colleagues have come together in a show of journalistic solidarity to keep his legacy alive and finish the book the British journalist was working on at the time of his death.

Phillips and his Brazilian companion, the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, were killed while returning from the remote Javari valley in the western Amazon last June. Three men have been charged with murder and are being held in high-security prisons while awaiting a decision on whether they will face trial.

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The multinational companies that industrialised the Amazon rainforest

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Analysis shows handful of corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of raw materials a year – and their commitments to restoration vary greatly

A handful of global giants dominate the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, extracting tens of billions of dollars of raw materials every year, according to an analysis that highlights how much value is being sucked out of the region with relatively little going back in.

But even as the pace of deforestation hits record highs while standards of living in the Amazon are among the lowest in Brazil, the true scale of extraction remains unknown, with basic details about cattle ranching, logging and mining hard to establish despite efforts to ban commodities linked to its destruction.

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More than 800m Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand

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Investigation involving Guardian shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming in Brazil

More than 800m trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, according to a new investigation, despite dire warnings about the forest’s importance in fighting the climate crisis.

A data-driven investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, vows Brazil’s Lula

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President says last year’s killings were result of ‘encouragement of anarchy’ in Amazon under Bolsonaro

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed, blaming their killings a year ago on the Amazonian “anarchy” unleashed under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

Phillips, a British journalist, and Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert, were shot dead by a group of illegal fishers on 5 June last year while travelling in the remote Javari valley near Brazil’s border with Colombia and Peru.

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Last images of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira found on recovered phone

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Photos and videos on phone found near site of men’s killing show some of their last movements in Brazilian Amazon

Some of the last images of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have been found after Indigenous activists recovered a mobile phone Pereira was carrying when the two men were killed in the Brazilian Amazon last year.

The phone was found last October when activists from Univaja, the Indigenous association where Pereira worked, returned to a stretch of flooded forest along the Itaquaí River where the men’s bodies were taken after they were shot dead on their boat on the morning of 5 June 2022.

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Outcry as Brazil congress moves to gut environment and Indigenous ministries

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Plan to drastically dilute bodies’ powers would deal severe blow to Lula’s attempt to reverse Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation

Brazilian activists have voiced outrage after congress moved to drastically dilute the powers of the environment and Indigenous peoples ministries in what campaigners called a potentially crippling blow to efforts to protect Indigenous communities and the Amazon.

Hopes that Brazil could turn the page on Jair Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation were sky-high after the far-right leader lost last year’s presidential election to the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. During his campaign Lula vowed to stamp out environmental crime and champion Indigenous people, and after taking power in January put the veteran environmentalist Marina Silva in charge of environmental affairs and made the Indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara head of a new ministry for Indigenous peoples.

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Cocoa planting is destroying protected forests in west Africa, study finds

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Global trade in chocolate, worth more than $1tn a year, is leading to widespread deforestation in Ivory Coast and Ghana

The world’s hunger for chocolate is a major cause of the destruction of protected forests in west Africa, scientists have said.

Satellite maps of Ivory Coast and Ghana showed swathes of formerly dense forest had become cocoa plantations since 2000, according to a study.

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Grain trader Cargill faces legal challenge in US over Brazilian soya supply chain

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World’s biggest grain trader accused of ‘shoddy due diligence’ on deforestation and alleged rights violations

The world’s largest grain trader, Cargill, is facing a first-ever legal challenge in the United States over its failure to remove deforestation and human rights abuses from its soya supply chain in Brazil.

ClientEarth, an environmental law organisation, filed the formal complaint on Thursday, accusing Cargill of inadequate monitoring and a laggard response to the decline of the Amazon rainforest and other globally important biomes, such as the Cerrado savannah and the Atlantic Forest.

Soya beans bought from third-party traders, which make up 42% of all Brazilian soya Cargill purchases.

Soya beans owned by other companies that passes through Cargill ports.

Indirect land use change.

Soya sourced from the Cerrado savannah.

Soya sourced from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

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UK company mining gold in Amazon on disputed land

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London-listed Serabi Gold extracting gold without approval of Brazilian land registry and Indigenous communities

A London-listed company has been mining gold in the Amazon rainforest without approval from the Brazilian land agency or the consent of nearby Indigenous communities, according to an investigation by the Guardian and partners.

Serabi Gold has been blasting 4.5 metre-wide tunnels and trucking ore from the Coringa project site in Pará state. But interviews with land agency officials and documents seen by the Guardian, Unearthed and Sumaúma indicate that ownership of the area is disputed and the land was allegedly occupied by illegal land-grabbers.

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Hyundai urged to stop illegal miners using its machines in Amazon

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Greenpeace report finds heavy machinery made by South Korean firm contributing to destruction of Brazilian rainforest

Hyundai is being urged to prevent its heavy machinery products from being used in illegal mining and environmental destruction in the Brazilian Amazon.

A report published by Greenpeace on Wednesday found the South Korean conglomerate’s excavators and other heavy machinery are precipitating the destruction of the rainforest and putting the survival of Indigenous populations at risk.

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Brazilian meat firm’s A- sustainability rating has campaigners up in arms

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Environmentalists question high grade given to JBS and accuse it of deforestation in the Amazon and under-reporting emissions

The award of an A-minus sustainability grade to the world’s biggest meat company has raised eyebrows and kicked off a debate about the rating system for environmental and social governance.

Brazilian meat company JBS has previously been linked to deforestation in the Amazon, where its slaughterhouses process beef from ranches carved out of the Amazon, Cerrado and other biomes. But in the latest Climate Change Report by the influential rating organisation CDP, the multinational got a grade of A- for its efforts to tackle climate change – up from B in the previous assessment – and was given a “leadership” status award.

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Two new species of yeast named after Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips

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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.

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Record deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest shows challenge facing Lula

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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.

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Scientists prove clear link between deforestation and local drop in rainfall

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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.

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Canadian minister calls for emergency order to save country’s last spotted owls

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Steven Guilbeault wants to block logging of critical old-growth forest to prevent owls from going extinct in British Columbia

Canada’s environment minister plans to use a rare emergency order to protect the last of an endangered owl species in an area where critical old-growth forest is slated for further clearcutting.

Steven Guilbeault advised the environmental groups Ecojustice and the Wilderness Committee that he believed the spotted owl was facing “imminent threats to its survival” and he would use the powers to block further destruction of its habitat in British Columbia, the groups announced on Thursday afternoon.

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Cattle, not coca, drive deforestation of the Amazon in Colombia – report

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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.

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Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s Marina Silva

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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.

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