Amazonia

Conservationists breathed a sigh of relief when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential election in the fall of 2022. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had opened large parts of the Amazon region to business by crippling enforcement of environmental laws and turning a blind eye to land grabbing. It should come as no surprise that deforestation showed a sharp uptick. However, while Lula oversaw a more than 70% drop in deforestation during his first run as president in the early 2000s, the rainforest’s future remains deeply uncertain. That’s in part because Brazilian administrations, whether of the right or left, have all promoted an ambitious project to boost exports and the economy called the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, or IIRSA. The initiative focuses on new roads, dams and industry that can threaten the region’s fragile rainforest ecosystem – and harm the world’s climate i...

Leer en español ou em português The Ashéninka woman with the painted face radiated a calm, patient confidence as she stood on the sandy banks of the Amonia River and faced the loggers threatening her Amazonian community. The loggers had bulldozed a trail over the mahogany and cedar saplings she had planted, and blocked the creeks her community relied on for drinking water and fish. Now, the outsiders wanted to widen the trail into a road to access the towering rainforests that unite the Peruvian and Brazilian border along the Juruá River. María Elena Paredes, as head of the Sawawo Hito 40 monitoring committee, said no, and her community stood by her. She knew she represented not just her community and the other Peruvian Indigenous communities, but also her Brazilian cousins downstream who also rely on these forests, waters and fish. Roads beget more roads. The Interoceanic Highway, shown here, allowed logge...