Amazon

CARACAS, Venezuela — In early March, a series of wildfires ravaged the savannas of Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southeastern state of Bolivar, bordering the Venezuelan Amazon, and reached the Auyantepui, one of the park’s iconic, billion-year-old tabletop mountains, or tepuis, known for their unique mountain ecosystems. For days, the […]

The Pan Amazon is a significant source of several key industrial commodities. Global markets are not overly dependent on the region; nonetheless, production from Amazonian mines is not insignificant. Development of mineral resources is a decades-long process and, if the extractive sector were to abandon the region, as proposed by some environmental advocates, the global […]

Floodplains are extraordinarily productive because they are the interface between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are remarkably diverse because they integrate a mosaic of lakes, marshes, palm swamps and inundated forests, which create the complex food webs that support fish populations. Floodplain habitats are socially and economically vital because tens of thousands of families depend […]

“Don’t go to Zabaleta because they’re going to kill you.” “Why are they going to kill me if I haven’t done anything?” “They’re going to kill you, please don’t go to your house.” “How do you know that?” “Someone told me: ‘Tell your sister, for the love of God, to not to get involved because […]

Bolivia was a leader in the agrarian reform movement in South America. A defining moment in its modern history was the national revolution of 1952, which started as an uprising against the feudal system that bound Indigenous communities to estates owned by wealthy families. The revolutionary government created the Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA) […]

Pensar Agro (“thinking agribusiness”), or IPA, lobbied hard for newly passed legislation like the so-called time frame bill that undermines Indigenous land rights and opens up the territories to mining.

The macroeconomic hypothesis that infrastructure investments stimulate economic growth assumes that these physical assets overcome a logistical or systemic constraint on production. In practice, this requires for individual projects to be the subject to an objective feasibility analysis, are priced fairly, and have been approved after the full evaluation of their social and environmental impacts. […]

A handful of pioneering Amazonian chocolatiers are promoting keeping the rainforest standing by taking advantage of two forest products: cacao and cupuaçu.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Monitoring the threats that uncontacted traditional peoples face in the Brazilian Amazon is set to become easier for Indigenous rights activists and agencies, thanks to a new software tool developed by three Indigenous organizations and made available online in September. Mopi is an online interactive map that gathers a mix of […]

With about 80% of its forests still untouched, Acre is one of Brazil’s least-deforested Amazonian states. Bordered by Peru on the west, it represents just 1.7% of Brazil’s huge land mass but is of great ecological importance as it’s mostly covered in both dense and open Amazon rainforest, home to giant anteaters, sloths, and harpy […]