President Donald Trump isn’t the only world leader who has been criticized for sidelining science in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Brazil’s Health Ministry removed the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths from a government website Saturday, Reuters reported. And health ministry employees told local media that the scrubbing was ordered by far-right […]
Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is angry that 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is speaking out for indigenous rights. On Sunday, Thunberg tweeted a response to the killing of two indigenous leaders in Northeast Brazil Saturday. “Indigenous people are literally being murdered for trying to protect the forest from illegal deforestation,” she wrote. “Over […]
Two indigenous leaders were killed in a drive-by shooting in Northeast Brazil Saturday, and two others were injured. The murdered men belonged to the Guajajara tribe, which is known for organizing guardians to defend their Amazon rainforest territory against illegal tree clearing, The Guardian pointed out. Violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities has increased during the […]
Despite confirmation this week that the deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest is at its highest in more than a decade, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro refuses to take the problem seriously. When confronted with findings from Brazil‘s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) that deforestation between August 2018 and July 2019 was at its […]
The deforestation rate in Brazil‘s Amazon rainforest is at its highest in more than a decade, CNN reported Tuesday. The latest figures come from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Using satellite data, the agency concluded that the forest lost 9,762 square kilometers (approximately 3,769 square miles) in the year leading up to July […]
Illegal loggers shot and killed an indigenous defender of Brazil‘s Amazon rainforest, the Guajajara tribe announced Saturday, as Reuters reported. Paulo Paulino Guajajara, in his 20s, was a member of the Guajajara group Guardians of the Forest, which was formed in 2012 to protect the Araribóia reservation in Brazil’s Maranhão state. In an interview with […]
If current deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest continue, the forest could be two years away from the “tipping point” after which it will no longer be able to sustain itself by making its own rain. That’s the warning issued by Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIEE), […]
Brazil’s main environmental agency said on Thursday the source of a sprawling oil spill along the northeast coast remains unknown, but that the crude oil was not produced in the country. The spill stretches over 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) of Brazil’s northeast coast, affecting 46 cities and around one hundred of the country’s nicest beaches […]
Seven Amazon countries signed a pact Friday to protect the world’s largest tropical rainforest in response to the record-breaking number of wildfires that have blazed through the Amazon rainforest this summer, Reuters reported. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname agreed to create a network to coordinate their responses to disasters like this summer’s […]