Saving the rainforests will save Florida

In short, it's going to be very difficult to protect Florida's natural wonders and the health of our economy from climate change unless we protect the world's rainforests.

Map Card courtesy of Striderv/Flickr

Brazil Farmers Shown How to Profit By Conserving

The Amazon rain forest in Brazil has lost nearly 20 percent of its area since the 1970s, largely because of ranchers and farmers seeking new land for their cattle and crops.

Photo courtesy of Joelle Hernandez/Flickr

Nuns face guns, impunity in trying to save Amazon

The main cause of deforestation, the government says, are ranchers who illegally clear jungle to graze cattle and grow soy — often using threats and violence to remove the poor farmers eking a living there.

Photo courtesy of Charles Thomas/Flickr

Deforestation Pushing Amazon to Its Ecological Limits

When you don’t know the effects of damaging a highly complex, invaluably important ecological system, make sure not to damage it.

Photo courtesy of Leonardo Freitas/Flickr

Saving the Amazon may be the most cost-effective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions

Beginning in the 1960s, politicians in Brazil pushed to populate the rain forest and to clear tracts for cattle, soybeans and timber. Across the Amazon, homesteaders were promised title to their plots if they cut down trees to make the land "productive."

Photo courtesy of Charles Thomas/Flickr

Big business leaves big forest footprints

Consumers around the globe are not aware that they are "eating" rainforests, says Andrew Mitchell. In this week's Green Room, he explains how many every-day purchases are driving the destruction of the vital tropical ecosystems.

Photo courtesy of Tom Spaulding/Flickr

To save Amazon rainforest, expert pushes smarter farming to replace slash-and-burn

Brazilian officials and environmentalists agree that cattle ranching is the biggest cause of deforestation of the nation's Amazon, an area the size of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, about 20 percent of which has been destroyed.

Photo courtesy of Charles Thomas/Flickr

UN publishes report detailing ‘critical situation’ of indigenous people

‘The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples’ asserts that ‘many of these communities are now on the brink of what some describe as genocide’, and highlights as particularly threatening the construction of dams and the clearing of forests for logging, mines and soy plantations.

Photo courtesy of Chany Crystal/Flickr

Deforestation linked to drought

Researchers at Swansea University’s School of the Environment and Society say that deforestation and wood burning can lead to a lack of rainfall due to smoke in the atmosphere.

[Photograph by: leoffreitas]

Rethinking Deforestation – A Copenhagen Challenge

Some of the poorest people in the world reside in the regions in and around the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. To survive, they cut down the trees and sell them. Although there have been attempts to ‘block’ this wood from international markets, these efforts have not been successful. Once the trees are cut down, cattle farmers move in and once the land has been over-grazed and the cattle move on, farmers often begin growing soybeans.

[Photograph by: Rhett Butler/Mongabay]

Jobs, economics complicate Brazil's Amazon fight

A few decades ago, Mato Grosso — "thick forest" in Portuguese — was covered by jungle. Today, it is an endless plain of soy farms and meatpacking plants that resembles the American Midwest.

[Photograph by: Rhett Butler/Mongabay]