This publication shows that carbon prices exceeding US$ 20 per ton of CO2 captured by the natural regeneration of deforested areas in the Amazon would be truly transformative for the region’s landscape. Offsets for captured carbon would ensure forest integrity, inducing extensive forest restoration and the capture of 16 Gt …
Roads spread destruction and deforestation in the Amazon, now Peru, driven by neoliberal imperatives, plans a highway for one of the regions most sensitive forests This vast wilderness of 2m square km of rainforests and savannahs is formed of the headwaters of three major river basins, the Juruá, Purús, and …
Pope Francis issued a ringing defence of the people and the environment of the Amazon on Friday, saying big business and “consumerist greed” could not be allowed to destroy a natural habitat vital for the entire planet. Francis, who has made the environment and climate change a focus of his …
The world’s last great wildernesses are shrinking at an alarming rate. In the past two decades, 10% of the earth’s wilderness has been lost due to human pressure, a mapping study by the University of Queensland has found. Over the course of human history, there has been a major degradation …
A Brazilian activist who helped thousands of people in the Amazon rainforest to use their land sustainably won an international environmental award on Wednesday. Despite threats from logging companies, Maria Margarida Ribeiro da Silva, from the northern state of Pará, has been campaigning for more than a decade for the …
In the past five years, a group of miners from the Amazonas Region and Madre de Dios have destroyed about 20 hectares of forest, not including the constant contamination from the Pastacillo stream, in the Río Santiago district. Although two bans have been put in place, the Wampis community claims …
Greenpeace alleges 12 companies continued to trade with Madeireira Cedro Arana after its founder was accused of ordering torture and murder Illegal logging seized in Brazil. More than a dozen US and European companies have been importing timber from a Brazilian logging firm whose owner is implicated in one of …
Developing countries around the world are expanding hydropower to meet growing energy demand. In the Brazilian Amazon, >200 dams are planned over the next 30 years, and questions about the impacts of current and future hydropower in this globally important watershed remain unanswered. In this context, we applied a hydrologic …
British fast food restaurants and grocery chains, including Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald’s, buy their chicken from Cargill, which feeds its poultry with imported soy, much of it apparently coming from the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado — areas rapidly being deforested for new soy plantations. A decade ago, Cargill and …
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil will reinstate a mining ban in a vast area of the Amazon rainforest, the government announced on Monday, in an about-face that is a victory for environmentalists who feared deforestation. The Mines and Energy Ministry said in a statement that President Michel Temer’s administration had decided …
Latin American cloud forests, energy-saving street lights in Rio de Janeiro and sustainable cattle ranching in the Amazon will get a boost from new financial instruments to channel capital for tackling climate change, their backers said. The Lab, a network of programmes that incubates sustainable finance mechanisms, expects to attract …
- Locals are more effective than governments in protecting the world's largest rainforest, a study said on Tuesday, amid efforts to crackdown on soaring illegal deforestation. Ranching and logging are rapidly destroying forests that have been home for centuries to indigenous communities in the Amazon, often dubbed the "lungs of …
On 23 August it emerged that the president of Brazil, Michel Temer, had issued a decree abolishing the protected status of an immense area of the Amazon forest. The area is in the north of the country, beyond the Amazon river, going up to the frontiers with French Guiana and …
The Juma Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), in the northern state of Amazonas, is regarded as a model both in the country and across the world. In addition to bringing the deforestation rate down to zero, the project being implemented in the area has enabled the local population to generate income …
Last weekend, a tribunal held by indigenous communities in Gualaquiza, in the Amazon headwaters region of Ecuador, accused the nation’s first large scale mining operation of major human and environmental abuses. The Mirador and Panantza-San Carlos open-pit copper mines are run by Ecuacorriente S.A. (ECSA) and owned by the Chinese …
We evaluate the Community Atmosphere Model Version 5 (CAM5) with a higher-order turbulence closure scheme, named Cloud Layers Unified By Binomials (CLUBB), and a Multiscale Modeling Framework, referred as the “super-parameterization” (SP) with two different microphysics configurations to investigate their influences on rainfall simulations over Southern Amazonia. The two different …
Three recent South American studies emphasize the importance of intact forests to healthy habitat and a stable climate — both locally, and at a great distance. The first study found that forest integrity is crucial for habitat stability and resilience. Degradation makes it harder for Brazil’s Caatinga forest to recover …
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s government will revise a decree that opened up a vast mineral reserve in the Amazon rainforest to mining, ministers told journalists on Monday, responding to overwhelming criticism from lawmakers and activists. Mining and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho said the government would rescind its prior decree …
The Brazilian president Michel Temer has abolished an Amazonian reserve the size of Denmark, prompting concerns of an influx of mineral companies, road-builders and workers into the species-rich forest. The dissolution of the Renca reserve – which spans 46,000 sq km on the border of the Amapa and Para states …
Increased energy demand has led to plans for building many new dams in the western Amazon, mostly in the Andean region. Historical data and mechanistic scenarios are used to examine potential impacts above and below six of the largest dams planned for the region, including reductions in downstream sediment and …
APUI, Brazil (Reuters) - The small town of Apui sits at the new frontline of Brazil's fight against advancing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, where vast forest fires belch jet black smoke visible for miles and loggers denude the jungle. The home of 21,000 people in southern Amazonas state was …
