Rainforest revival: has Brazil turned the tide on deforestation?

The sheer visible scale of both the destruction, and of what remains, is breathtaking. It’s one of Brazil’s greatest hopes, and greatest challenges.

Photo courtesy of Lalo de Almeida/NY Times

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

Açaí, a Global Super Fruit, Is Dinner in the Amazon

In places like Cametá, a town of about 117,000, and Belém, the capital of Pará State, a bowl of açaí pulp is a filling side dish especially valued by poorer families.

Photo courtesy of Seth Kugel/NY Times

‘Avatar’ is Real in the Amazon

The story of Chevron in Ecuador is no less dramatic, tragic, or inspiring than the fantasy world of Pandora.

Photo courtesy of AP/20th Century Fox

Companies fund projects to preserve Amazon rain forest

Around the world, dozens of REDD projects, sponsored by environmental groups and funded by firms including Merrill Lynch & Co., Walt Disney Co., American Electric Power Co., BP and United Parcel Service Inc., are underway.

Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Company

Everything's even bigger in Brazilian Amazon

In fact, the Brazilian Amazon alone is more than seven times the size of Texas. It accounts for about half of Brazil’s national territory, but is sparsely populated compared with areas to the south.

Photo courtesy of William Quatman/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

Amazon set for second hydrocarbon boom

The Peruvian Amazon is in the early stages of a second hydrocarbon boom, which could have damaging effects on biodiversity and indigenous people. That's according to researchers from the US and Spain, who are the first to plot historical trends in oil and gas exploration and extraction in the forest.

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Big cities and global farming now driving deforestation, study finds

In recent years, tropical countries have been supplying growing amounts of palm oil, soybeans, sugar, meat and other processed products to distant markets abroad. Not all the products are used for food; palm oil and sugar in particular are also being converted into biofuels.

Photo courtesy of Damon Winter/NY Times

Brazil: Don't Shove Belo Monte Down Our Throats!

Meanwhile, Amazon defender and Green Party candidate Marina Silva, running 8% in polls, has criticized Belo Monte for lacking a coherent socio-environmental plan to support the people of the Xingú. Yet both front runners – Serra and Rousseff – have a strong interest in building Belo Monte and many more mega-dams in the Amazon to keep hydroelectricity profits flowing into industry and government coffers.

Photo courtesy of Rogério Costa/Flickr

Palm oil deal 'a threat to the rainforest'

The policy is almost certain to increase demand for palm oil, which can only be grown in tropical climates in Malaysia, Indonesia and other Asian countries, West Africa and the Amazon in Brazil. Rainforests have strong carbon credentials; they suck carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow.

Photo courtesy of Adam Lane/Flickr

Amazon River Water Being Stolen and Bottled Abroad

A recently published report is exposing some shocking exploitation of the Amazon's natural resources--and this time it's water being stolen. Where is this water headed? According to the report, "tankers are quietly removing water" to be bottled and sold in Europe and the Middle East.

Photo courtesy of Brian Ritchie/Flickr

Amazon rainforest will bear cost of biofuel policies in Brazil

Business-as-usual agricultural expansion to meet biofuel production targets for 2020 will take a heavy toll on Brazil's Amazon rainforest in coming years, undermining the potential emissions savings of transitioning from fossil fuels to biofuels, warns a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Photo courtesy of Andre Penner/AP

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