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Amazon rainforest

Missionaries and industry bring disease to Brazil’s indigenous communities

March 26, 2020

Centuries of epidemic disease, from smallpox and malaria to measles and influenza, have been imported into Brazil’s native communities by missionaries, colonists, and the mining, logging and ranching industries. Now, these same invasive forces appear ready to bring the coronavirus pandemic to the deep reaches of the Amazon. The missionaries are coming One religious organization, Ethnos360, […]

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The Amazon is still burning, and investors are cranking up the pressure on Brazil

October 11, 2019

Massive fires continue to burn in the Amazon rainforest, and the investors are getting restless. Now, a coalition of 230 investment funds managing more than US$16 trillion in assets worldwide is considering different ways to confront the crisis. The funds include such powerhouses as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, China Asset Management and Mitsubishi […]

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Hundreds of environmental activists have been murdered in Brazil, and almost no one is being prosecuted

September 24, 2019

Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be an environmental activist, and no one’s doing anything about it. Over the past decade 300 Brazilian environmental activists have been assassinated, but just five percent of those cases — 14 in total — have ended up in the courtroom. A report from […]

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Brazil’s plans for the Amazon have united these longtime tribal enemies

September 19, 2019

Generations of enmity are now in the past as indigenous groups in the Xingu river basin of Brazil’s southern Para state are patching things up to fight a common enemy. Tribal historians tell of bloody vendettas between the Panara and Kayapo peoples that in some cases date back almost 100 years and that saw the […]

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A strange alliance is forming against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest

September 11, 2019

As the Amazon rainforest burns with historic ferocity, a strange alliance of ecological advocates and industry is forming to confront the inflammatory rhetoric of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. At a meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, representatives from the industrial-agriculture sector joined with ecological-advocacy groups to protest the increased deforestation of the Amazon this year. Worried […]

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Here’s who to blame for the Amazon rainforest inferno

September 7, 2019

A confusing tangle of allegations made it difficult to figure out who was at fault for the wildfires consuming Brazil’s Amazon rainforest this summer. President Jair Bolsonaro has famously blamed environmental organizations for setting the fires, claiming that they are disgruntled after he cut off their access to foreign funds. One ruralist — the cattle […]

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