Organic farmers in Altamira are working to change the culture of a region where many people think nothing of using pesticides to kill weeds and insects. As well as the fight against entrenched attitudes, they face economic and climate challenges

After another year of horrendous drought, the Amazon welcomes the start of the rainy season but we must brace for a tough 2025 – climatically and politically – ahead of COP30 in Belém

The victims of a climate catastrophe they helped bring about, soybean farmers from the southern Brazilian state have arrived in Altamira, Pará, to lease land, which will expand deforestation and disrupt rainfall patterns

The Sarayaku people of the Ecuadorian Amazon propose that human societies should be governed by the concept of ‘Kawsak Sacha’, or ‘Living Forest’, in order to change the destructive relationships that have led the planet to climate collapse

An investigation by SUMAÚMA suggests land grabbers and ranchers are committing arson for commercial and political objectives, safe in the knowledge that investigations are few and punishments weak

In the forest, the author expands her senses to try to discover, in the crackle of the fire, why we would destroy our own dreams

An invitation to recapture the power of the images and voices living inside us and use them as a strategy for forging community and addressing the climate collapse

With a paltry promise of funds to the poorest nations, the conference in Baku approved of carbon trading as the main alternative, failed to advance against fossil fuels, and is leaving it to Belém to make the polluters pay

The industry is hollowing out promises of zero deforestation and is trying to rein in the ambitions of the Climate Plan that will determine the role agriculture will play in cutting the country’s emissions

Australian Aboriginal writer Alexis Wright says there is no safe haven from global collapse. Yet she believes that strong, voluminous literature can help us make sense of what we are going through

A new study shows meatpacking exporters operating in the Legal Amazon do not map their indirect suppliers as the EU wants them to do. By postponing the Deforestation Regulation, each of these companies can contribute to deforestation of an area ten times the size of Paris

Drought, heat, and storms caused by global heating and the destruction of Nature have disrupted the half-moon religious traditions in communities in the Lower Amazon region

Caramelo the horse became a symbol of resilience during flooding in Rio Grande do Sul when he was rescued from atop a house in the Mathias Velho neighborhood of Canoas. In this cartoon report, based on interviews with people connected to Caramelo, we talk about what his life is like now and imagine what he would say about everything that happened

With serious effects on the Xingu River’s Volta Grande region from Belo Monte’s sequestration of most of the river’s water to power hydroelectric turbines, turtle children are dying in their nests from hotter temperatures

At a recent gathering in the Bolivian Amazon, a group of Indigenous, Ribeirinho, Quilombola, and Pan-Amazonian activists drew up an alternative treaty to the failed COP negotiations

In the Xipaya Indigenous Territory, the Iriri River is suffering the effects of climate change, as its waters change color and its fish die. We Indigenous people are living in a time of uncertainty

An invitation to recapture the power of the images and voices living inside us and use them as a strategy for forging community and addressing the climate collapse

How do we deal with droughts and floods? How can we live in human and non-human community, with equity, comfort, and safety? We must tread lightly, our footsteps gentle

River levels have reached record lows in what is usually one of the planet’s great sources of freshwater, another sign that the vast rainforest basin is slipping toward a point of no return

More droughts, more floods, less action – the world’s governments are putting fossil fuels above people and the planet. It is time to give indigenous peoples the power to lead a fight back

One of the world’s leading researchers on the Amazon and climate change says it’s still possible to prevent total collapse if we act now and listen to the real scientists: Indigenous people

Indigenous leader Mara Xavante relates how the flames threatened her village in Mato Grosso, a state that suffered 19,964 fires in September

The first stop on the road from Cali to Belém, the UN conference in Colombia brought wins to Indigenous peoples, but failed to ensure commitments from wealthy countries to protect the environment

A worsening climate and the destruction of Nature are connected but treated separately at parallel global events that dialog very little with each other, hindering an effective response to the world’s polycrisis

The Colombian hosts of COP16 are rightly trying to reconnect biodiversity protection and emissions reduction, but – with Brazil’s help – they should go even further and recognise ecology is the basis for the economy

The Guató and Boe Bororo peoples are fighting uncontrollable fires and the extinction of a nearly 9,000-year-old civilization

Responsible politicians should warn voters that life is going to get worse—but who’s going to vote for the truth?

Militarism, agribusiness, evangelical Christianity, and links to criminal factions – SUMAÚMA examined why predatory political forces are consolidating their power ahead of the 2026 presidential race

The Pensar Agropecuária Institute is a campaigning machine financed by industry trade groups who influence legislators to destroy protections for nature

Photojournalist Edmar Barros travels through one of the regions hardest hit by the fires in the Amazon to show the havoc wreaked by flames and drought. In this diary, published by Amazônia Latitude in partnership with SUMAÚMA, he discusses his expedition

Amid drought-dust and fire-smoke, the municipal campaign in this dictatorship-created city only has two candidates, and both are connected to anti-democratic, pro-Bolsonaro groups

In the town that led Brazil’s infamous Fire Day, land thieves flex their muscles and set the tone for the next elections, pressuring Congress, the Judiciary, and the Lula administration to sever and privatize a chunk of Jamanxim National Forest twice the area of São Paulo city

One of the poorest and most remote regions of the Brazilian Amazon has become a laboratory for fake news as opposition groups peddle lies to win votes in the archipelago

In Medicilândia, Darci Alves Pereira adopted a new name, got rich, started an Evangelical church, and tried to enter politics through Jair Bolsonaro’s party

Either we halt destruction or we’ll see a lot more blood, pain, death, and maybe extinction

Worldwide, more people will vote this year than ever before, but instead of a cause of celebration, this is a source of worry because extreme politics are thriving in an era of extreme weather

On the frontline of the war waged against Nature, our newsroom is Amazonizing with the arrival of its first forest-journalists

‘The environment and its natural resources are at the heart of the discussion on the maintenance of democracy,’ said Hugo Loss, an official in Brazil’s environmental protection agency and a former target of surveillance by the Bolsonaro administration

The authors of the Army’s doctrine on the region see Indigenous people as ‘foreigners’ while calling for alliances with illegal miners and looking to China’s dictatorship for solutions

Archeologist and historian João Heitor Silva talks about the post-flood discovery of hundreds of pre-Colonial Guarani items in an area that used to be a farm and he reflects on learnings from what may be the state’s largest archeological site

Urgent action is needed to contain the capitalist metastasis spreading through the Amazon and far beyond

Science has proved that psychedelics, like ayahuasca, can increase the production of new neurons. But reducing the benefits of these ritual medicines to ‘cellular plasticity’ is a dangerous gateway to their appropriation by the market

A journey through the literature of the great deltas, true frontiers of Nature, where the end (of the river) meets the beginning (of the sea)

Revelers in Gurupá fight to keep faith and resistance alive during the festival of Saint Benedito in Quilombo communities in the Marajó Archipelago

The Brazilian government has decreed a national strategy for bioeconomy. Used well, it could direct more subsidies towards traditional forest communities. But the terms are so disputed that agribusiness is also vying for resources

Eighteen deals have been registered in the name of Indigenous Carbon, a new company with ties to U.S. entrepreneur Michael Greene, who has been accused of public land theft by the Pará Public Defender’s Office

Companies linked to the US entrepreneur are said to have made agreements that are “unduly disadvantageous” to Amazon communities on the carbon market, but Indigenous associations still defend the projects

Groups in Pará have accused a UK-linked company and a former São Paulo police officer of irregularities and abusive contracts related to public lands

Two projects whose carbon offset credits were sold to companies such as Gol, Nestlé, Toshiba, and PwC may have laundered timber illegally sourced from deforested areas. This report is part of the Opaque Carbon series, which brings together 14 Latin American media outlets

Aldo Rebelo, a former ally of Workers’ Party presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff, now mixes with Bolsonaro supporters and landgrabbers. He is promoting an agricultural-military political agenda in one of the epicenters of the destruction of the Amazon forest

An Amazonian border city already impacted substantially by drug trafficking fears it will not withstand the increasingly frequent climate disasters

Fires have grown by 285% in Roraima, the result of crime, deforestation and the climate crisis, reducing part of the forest to ash, burning animals and leaving people with no home

Alarms about the end of the world are becoming banal. There is no worse sign of the human predicament

Planetary historians have rejected proposals to announce a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, but nobody doubts the impact of our species on the world will last for thousands of years

In an exclusive interview with SUMAÚMA, Yanomami political leader Davi Kopenawa expresses hope that Lula has become wiser about protecting the Amazon: “Before, he made a mistake, I don’t want him to deceive us again”

Photographer Araquém Alcântara talks to SUMAÚMA about his 50 years covering the Amazon and developing a spiritual relationship with the Forest, that is now being destroyed

There is no ‘morality agenda’ versus ‘economic agenda’; just one same policy meant to control and destroy rebellious bodies

The northern region waits anxiously to see whether Petrobras will be awarded a license for the FZA-M-59 block, which could open the way for oil drilling in areas where there is a heightened risk of an oil spill reaching mangrove forests

With the agrarian reform agency’s failure to act, a Brazilian multinational, that irregularly bought federal lands a few years ago, is now pressuring landless rural workers and striving to demobilize social movements in southeast Pará. Reporting done in partnership between King’s College London and SUMAÚMA

It has never been more important to speak out against injustice and the threats to the Forest and its people

She overcame slavery in the rubber era, the invasion of large landowners with their armed gunmen, and the neglect of the State and proved her people were not extinct and the Amazon region was the home of her ancestors

The perverse way that so much land is concentrated in the hands of so few is the result of land theft through ‘grilagem’. This text is an attempt to better explain this process so we can grasp the full effects of it on the Amazon region

Who gains from the war on drug trafficking if crime and death only grow, terrorizing the poor, corrupting the State, and holding society hostage?

2,202 days after the fact, we finally learn the councilwoman was assassinated for the same reason as the martyrs of the Amazon

Peruvian author Joseph Zárate, an Indigenous writer with an international reputation, discovered his own forest through the memories of his grandmother

Indigenous peoples and traditional communities enjoy the advantages of the technology that is making rapid inroads into the region, while trying to tighten security and raise awareness about the risks. The government is studying ways to block Starlink signals in illegal mining areas

The Amazonian municipality has had nearly 30 accidents in two decades, 16 of them connected to Norway’s Norsk Hydro and France’s Imerys, and residents fear contamination from heavy metals and a 636% spike in cancer cases from 2000 to 2022

Sem cumprir marcos legais, a corporação estadunidense opera dois portos de exportação de soja no Pará e agora pretende construir um terceiro. Ele nem saiu do papel, e o Ministério Público Federal suspeita de aquisição irregular de área nas ilhas de Abaetetuba

Gold exploration has lined the pockets of the organized crime groups terrorizing the country, and contaminated rivers with mercury

A previously unpublished report by Global Witness reveals that one in three cattle bought by JBS, Marfrig, and Minerva from ranches in the Cerrado biome of Mato Grosso state was raised on land that was deforested to make room for grazing

For 40 years, this indigenous people in Ecuador have fought against multiple actors to protect the living rainforest, setting an example that can be followed by other indigenous peoples and traditional communities

Guardians of the Amazon Forest in the Middle Xingu describe how the river’s rapids and waterfalls are more-than-human beings that interweave with their lives

The Sarayaku people of the Ecuadorian Amazon propose that human societies should be governed by the concept of ‘Kawsak Sacha’, or ‘Living Forest’, in order to change the destructive relationships that have led the planet to climate collapse

SUMAÚMA and New York University School of Law join forces to center the rights and perspectives of animal-people, plant-people, and fungi-people

River-journalist Sara Lima uses her deep knowledge of the Xingu to imagine how water-dwellers suffer from the hydroelectric dam that is choking the Volta Grande region. The story is told in graphic form through a character, Pacu Seringa, who represents life on the river.

Underground, hidden from sight, fungi are silently doing a remarkable job, associating with plant roots

Ethnic group living in Acre has been waiting since 1999 for recognition of their ancestral lands, which were turned into a national park and made off-limit to inhabitants. Demarcation resumed in 2023, then stalled once again

For more than 20 years, traditional forest communities and residents of extractive reserves in the Amazon have fought for the right to a decent education, but politicians and government agencies have paid little heed

The Catalan writer Gabi Martínez condemns the way many intellectuals have given up on nature, and defends the role of the world beyond the human in literature, opening up a new space for reflection at SUMAÚMA

In answer to the government’s call almost one century ago, their ancestors came to the rainforest, where they made their homes, married Indigenous women, and raised families, but today a negligent State treats them like invading land grabbers. Joelmir Silva, a member of this traditional forest community, did an investigative report to bring these people out of their invisibility

Healthcare provider who has coordinated the reopening of health posts closed by former president Bolsonaro talks about her experience during the health emergency and says the genocide will not end unless the illegal miners are kicked out once and for all

This is a story of Afro-Indigenous diplomacy and unity, when thirteen Indigenous people met the Afro-Brazilian community of Salgueiro during this year’s Carnival parade, which denounced the genocide of the Yanomami ethnic group and exalted Indigenous Brazil

The refrain of the 2024 theme song for the Salgueiro samba school, which will pay homage to the Yanomami people this Carnival, is an endangered truth. One year after the Lula administration declared a public health emergency in Yanomami Indigenous Territory, the deaths continue. The toll had reached 308 by the end of November, more than half involving children under the age of five

Genocide and catharsis meet in the alliance between the urban community of Salgueiro and the Yanomami forest

For leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa, the parade theme brought to Rio’s Sambadrome in the middle of the night on February 12 symbolizes an alliance between Indigenous and Black people to demand ‘respect’

SUMAÚMA has compiled a glossary to introduce our readers to the extraordinary world of a people who are fighting genocide while holding up the sky

A campaign led by environmental agency staff, the National Animal Protection Forum, and volunteer services is looking for homes for pets left behind after illegal invaders were expelled from Brazil’s most heavily deforested Indigenous territory

How the Brazilian government spent $200 million and mobilized nearly 2,000 healthcare workers, yet wasted a year in addressing the healthcare crisis in the Indigenous land

Veteran aid worker Doctor Cláudio Esteves, who succeeded in reducing malaria in the 1990s, decries today’s humanitarian crisis and illegal mining in Yanomami territory despite a year of government operations to eradicate the problems

Illegal miners have returned to Yanomami territory and so have the consequences. At a gathering of Yanomami women, participants discuss healthcare failures. There has been no screening for sexually transmitted diseases since the mining invasion and 38.1% of pregnant women have no access to prenatal care

If one day we decide to close the open veins of Latin America and free ourselves from exploitation by all kinds of gringos, we will do so by affirming our Afro-Indigenous roots, which always make life more verdant

Fishers have a plan to save human and more-than-human lives in the region affected by the Belo Monte Dam and they want the federal government to listen to them

‘An artist and businesswoman, a scientist, and an environmental consultant’ joined forces to preserve heritage in Monte Alegre, Pará

In Altamira, Pará, one of Brazil’s most deforested municipalities, big-leaf mahogany trees, Brazilian firetrees, and mango trees are poisoned and uprooted by residents to keep them from ‘messing up’ the roads

The Dubai UN summit experience of Wenatoa Parakanã and Marina Silva shows the contradictions of Brazil, which plans to increase oil exploration while reducing deforestation. The gigantic conference in Dubai also raises the question of whether COP30 in Belém should go back to basics

Pierre Friedlingstein, director of the Global Carbon Budget, a project that measures the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere each year, explains why forests and oceans are gradually losing their ability to continue saving life on the planet

Fossil fuels are the challenge at this year’s climate conference, but the slow pace of negotiations has socioenvironmental and antiracist movements frustrated, as deaths due to the impacts of global heating mount across the planet

The UN Conference gathers countries to try to solve the most global of problems: the climate crisis

Even though it’s his second time leading a state that is one of the worst offenders when it comes to deforestation, garimpo mining operations, and criminal fires, the political heir of the Barbalho clan, one of Brazil’s most powerful oligarchies, is managing to sell the image of a ‘green governor’

Controversial mining company behind two of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters funds public works to make Helder Barbalho’s state “sustainable.” Meanwhile, those on the frontline of climate change are shoved to the sidelines of the climate debate.

Brazil could fulfill its climate commitments and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels but instead of asserting itself as an ecological power, it plans to produce more oil for export, which risks a new era of energy dependence

With help from readers, SUMAÚMA put together a Q&A of your questions on this topic

At a conference that looks like it is set in a theme park, Lula undermines the government’s environmental credibility by announcing that Brazil will join OPEC+. Colombian president says only a new, progressive generation can move Latin America away from fossil fuels

In an exclusive interview with SUMAÚMA, Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change of Brazil, discusses oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon and the renewal of the operating license for the disastrous Belo Monte hydroelectric plant.

LiDAR surveillance by plane and the knowledge of traditional populations is helping Amazon archeologists to reconstruct the history of the human occupation of the rainforest, planted in part by original peoples but deemed uninhabited by governments in order to justify invasions and clearance

As a police net closes in on the former president, candidates are jostling to secure his endorsement by downplaying last year’s attempted coup

In a special edition, Rádio Sumaúma shows how the peoples most affected by the climate crisis are those living in the forest

In just thirty-five years, the Apyterewa-Parakanã peoples have seen their territory invaded, the forest cut down for illegal mahogany, and the conversion of this area to pastureland for 60,000 head of cattle – the on-going expulsion of the invaders will indicate the fate of the Amazon

Our conscious, ancestral production of fire was key to transforming us into animals capable of subjugating any and all land predators. What must we recover to save ourselves from our own Death drive?

Since 2015, the sequestering of the river’s water by the hydroelectric plant has interrupted lifecycles and killed thousands of fish, threatening food security for Indigenous and Ribeirinho peoples, with Brazil’s environmental regulator failing to make a decision to stop the destruction

It was born from a volcano from which water flowed. In Mexico, the centuries-old botanical and cosmological Chapultepec Park is an island of sensitivity, plant life, and thermal and acoustic comfort, surrounded by concrete

In Puerto Rico, the seawater and the insects glow in the dark but the people are fleeing. Natural resources can bring freedom and independence, colonization and submission. Hurricanes and earthquakes are cruel reminders of our hardships. What do we do when the lights go out?

A search for beings that sustain the Earth in a forest nearing the point of no return

There is a territory in Panama which, according to scientists, activists, politicians and journalists, will soon cease to exist. They say that Gardi Sugdub will be underwater, and its 1,300 inhabitants will become the first community of climate-displaced people in the Americas

Following a team of indigenous volunteer firefighters as they battle a blaze for 30 days and nights.

There is a love story behind the world’s finest yerba mate. The love of a man for a woman. Of a village for its traditions. Of a community for a forest surrounded by fields of soya and grazing cattle

Movements of air are essential to our planet’s vitality. But the winds are slowing just when we need them more than ever to turn our turbines, fertilise our crops and cool our cities

Miriam Marmontel, an oceanographer leading a research group on aquatic mammals, talks about the horrific scenes she witnessed on Lake Tefé, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, where at least 139 dolphins have died. While the climate crisis deepens in the Amazon, the animals’ cause of death is under investigation

The tool, created to help countries reach their pollution reduction targets, has led to growing corporate interest in the Amazon. Find out why

Associations are suspected of coopting traditional communities to continue destroying the forest by crafting supposedly legal operations wrapped in the name of ‘management plans’

Sem cumprir marcos legais, a corporação estadunidense opera dois portos de exportação de soja no Pará e agora pretende construir um terceiro. Ele nem saiu do papel, e o Ministério Público Federal suspeita de aquisição irregular de área nas ilhas de Abaetetuba

Brazil’s most iconic indigenous leader, the Kayapó learnt from the experience of Belo Monte that pressure must be put on white people’s governments – no matter the political party – so that nature and the native peoples are respected

Archaeology shows us that the region’s past is characterized by enormous cultural and technological diversity, contrary to the common view in terms of contemporary ideologies regarding the exploitation of nature.

Deborah Duprat, one of Brazil’s top legal experts, who defended the Indigenous people against the historic cut-off point thesis, believes that this debate will return to the Supreme Court and that Congress is deciding on matters outside of its authority

Xokleng elders and youth, the ‘people of the sun,’ are celebrating the outcome of the ruling against the legal thesis. SUMAÚMA was there to see reaction from older members, who remembered past struggles, while also explaining how the high court’s decision on land indemnifications could impact the future

In the past, mercenary killers skewered Indigenous children on their machetes; today, these little ones face hazards on their way to school and are the target of racism in public spaces—while they wait for the courts to decide whether they will have a territory and a future, or whether their lives will be condemned once again.

SUMAÚMA has drawn up a guide for a debate that involves both the future and life itself

SUMAÚMA visited the native peoples of the Ibirama-Laklãnõ territory, the center of the legal case being judged by the Federal Supreme Court. They have been victims of extermination campaigns for hundreds of years. Now once again they are threatened.

By 283 votes to 155, the House of Representatives approved unjust historic time limits on indigenous land demarcation

At COP28, the Brazilian president has sent mixed messages by aligning with OPEC. If he really wants to tackle the growing threat of droughts and floods, he must set a clear fossil-free, pro-nature direction for the UN climate summit he will host in Belém in 2025

The scientist Luciana Gatti, who discovered the forest’s declining capability to absorb carbon dioxide emissions caused by human action, shows in a new study that in climatic terms the effects of deforestation under Bolsonaro were the equivalent to the most extreme El Niño ever recorded

A two-year study with participation by researchers from the region shows that a standing forest economy, with no new hydroelectric plants or high-speed roads, would generate more jobs and income than the current predatory model that is taking the biome to the point of no return

A SUMAÚMA investigation reveals carbon credit companies are trying to secure deals on protected and disputed public lands, including indigenous territories, prompting concerns about ‘green land grabs.’ While the money from carbon credit deals can bring benefits, public prosecutors have accused some agents of contract abuses in their dealings with forest populations. Against this backdrop, there is a growing clamour for the government to establish ground rules

Document says there should be government agency oversight of carbon credit contracts, prior consultation, a clear division of benefits, and public announcements of the process

A report exclusively shown to SUMAÚMA shows chemical weapons were used in the massacre of eight villages in 1970 during the construction of highway BR-174. A retired colonel and Bolsonaro appointee has been appointed to a legal case against the federal government that may go to trial in the coming months

Amazon needs to prepare for unusual heat and drought as the fire season approaches

Aldo Rebelo, a former ally of Workers’ Party presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff, now mixes with Bolsonaro supporters and landgrabbers. He is promoting an agricultural-military political agenda in one of the epicenters of the destruction of the Amazon forest

An alliance of traditional communities, Indigenous researchers and university scientists aims to produce reliable data to counter information presented by Norte Energia on the impacts of the hydroelectric plant

‘Piracema Hydrogram,’ an animation made in partnership with Indigenous peoples and ribeirinhos, shows how the hydroelectric plant’s sequester of 70% of the river’s water has turned life into death in one of the Amazon’s most biodiverse regions

In an exclusive interview with SUMAÚMA Rodrigo Agostinho, the new president of Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama, says the “life of the river” will be paramount in deciding whether to extend the operation of the destructive dam on the Xingu. On the Petrobras application to explore for oil at the mouth of the Amazon river, he insists “every possible and imaginable impact” must first be examined.

Nine years after the licensing process for Block 59 began, the people of the Oiapoque region are granted a first meeting with Petrobras in which they reveal the project is already impacting their lives. It is very late to consult them. An accident simulation test, which is regarded as the final stage of the process, is scheduled for this month

Deputies and senators in the state of Amapá have organized a public hearing to try to discredit the environment ministry’s decision to block exploration in the Mouth of the Amazon River. They allowed no counter-argument or scientific debate and left it too late for indigenous communities to build a consensus. Instead they hammered home a political message and campaigned for pro-drilling Randolfe Rodrigues to replace Marina Silva as Minister of the Environment and Climate Change.

Deise Alves and Cláudio Esteves created a healthcare model that saved the Yanomami in the 1990s and early 2000s. But because they denounced illegal miners, their reputations have been destroyed and they are being asked to pay millions of reais to the government

Sandra Benites talks about the collective process of curating the exhibit, which sought to ‘set aside this exotic view of the Amazon, as an untouchable thing’ to show the region’s people and how it is ‘simmering’

Silent erosion and then a sudden crash turned the village of Arumã into a giant crater. Two residents are dead, three missing and several homes have been sucked down into the mud, victims of the climate crisis, El Niño and negligence by the authorities

Afro-Indigenous, a cabocla, and a ribeirinha, the woman at the helm of one of the most important departments in the environment ministry recalls that under Bolsonaro the words ‘traditional’ and ‘communities’ couldn’t even be used together. Now, reconstruction demands time. ‘We’re reforesting’

The referendum to halt oil drilling in the Yasuni national park is a victory for the Amazon forest, indigenous communities and climate activists. Brazil’s president Lula would do well to heed the lesson it teaches about stranded assets

In a single week, at least 14 people were murdered inside the indigenous territory, including a member of Brazil’s largest criminal organization – First Capital Command (PCC). In retaliation, the faction has sent out a message telling its members to target police and federal agents.

In denying the oil giant Petrobras a license to drill at the mouth of the Amazon, the president of Brazil’s environmental agency has shown that the Lula administration is willing to maintain its commitment to protecting the rainforest and combatting global heating. The greatest backlash has come from an ally, the government’s leader in Congress, heralding the onset of “friendly fire.”

Anthropologist Caio Pompeia, explains how Brazil’s leading agriculture industry think tank strengthened the political influence of the country’s farming sector and how it is planning to respond to the election of Lula.

At the Free Land Camp in Brasilia, Brazil’s president stated that he “would not leave any Indigenous land without demarcation,” but so far, he has ratified only six of the 251 Indigenous territories now in the process, while he has inherited an agency of Indigenous affairs 1,200 employees short and is governing under enormous pressure from a Congress where the majority are anti-Indigenous

Empowered and better represented in government than ever before, indigenous people opened a new chapter in their struggle at the “Terra Libre” (Free Land) Camp in 2023. But as well as celebrating political gains, there was disappointment at fewer-than-expected demarcations.

Marina Silva, the minister who lends international ballast to the environmental agenda of the Workers’ Party, went to bed Tuesday night feeling victorious in the debate over the environmental license to explore for oil at the mouth of the Amazon, but the next day she saw her power undermined and was blitzed by a predatory Congress that represents the interests of denialist agribusiness. And worst of all, with the Brazilian president’s consent