Amazon forest fires
Amazon countries sign rainforest pact to save it
Numerous studies have indicated that further deforestation would transform the Amazon into a net emitter of greenhouse gases and be disastrous to the planet.
- by Manuela Andreoni and Max Bearak
Latest
Elon Musk brought high-speed internet to the Amazon. Criminals love it
Illegal miners and those destroying the forest had to contend with bad access to the outside world. Not anymore.
- by Fabiano Maisonnave
Dozens of Yanomami children hospitalised in Amazon amid health crisis
An estimated 30,000 Yanomami people live in the country’s largest indigenous reservation now under a health emergency declaration.
- by Leonardo Benassatto and Amanda Perobelli
The Amazon is deteriorating too fast for species, people and climate to adapt
The critical ecosystem is being damaged at an unprecedented pace with grievous effects on biodiversity and human welfare, researchers say.
- by Carly Wanna
Lula restarts anti-deforestation raids in the Amazon
Reporter accompanied raids led by environmental agency Ibama to stop loggers and farmers illegally clearing land in the rainforest state of Para.
- by Jake Spring
The world hopes Lula will save the Amazon. After Bolsonaro, it won’t be easy
If its new president-elect keeps his promises to safeguard the rainforest, Brazil could have a major impact on the global fight against climate change.
- by Paulina Villegas and Sarah Kaplan
Brazil’s Amazon records worst August fires since 2010
The devastation generally caused by farmers lighting fires to clear land in drier months is more widespread than the blazes that set off global outrage in 2019.
- by Gabriel Araujo
Brazil hid ‘worst deforestation’ data until after COP26: Ministers
President Jair Bolsonaro and his environment minister knew the Amazon region’s annual deforestation rate was the worst in 15 years, cabinet ministers said.
- by Debora Alves
The country with the most fresh water on the planet has lost 15 per cent of it
The Brazilian scientists were sceptical. They ran different models to check calculations, but they all returned the same startling result.
- by Diane Jeantet
‘Cascade effect’: Amazon basin switches from carbon sink to CO2 source
The Amazon basin, one of the planet’s largest stores of carbon, is beginning to release more carbon-dioxide to the atmosphere than it absorbs as deforestation and fires spread, potentially accelerating global warming.
- by Peter Hannam
Amazon deforestation skyrockets to 12-year-high under Bolsonaro
The latest annual destruction of the Brazilian section of the rainforest is a 47 per cent increase from the area deforested in 2018.
- by Jake Spring and Lisandra Paraguassu