Tag: Brazilian Amazon

App lets Indigenous Brazilians connect in own languages

By Mohamed RACHEDI For Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, getting online is a challenge. Now, a smartphone app is making it easier to connect by allowing them to use their own native languages. Hyper-connected Brazil has more cell phones than people — over 250 million, for a population of 203 million, according to communications consultancy Teleco. But even when they have smartphones and internet connections, the sprawling country’s 1.7 million Indigenous inhabitants have often […]

Forest loss ‘hotspots’ bigger than Germany: WWF

by Patrick GALEY Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — More than 43 million hectares of forest — an area bigger than Germany — have been lost in a little over a decade in just a handful of deforestation hotspots, conservation organisation WWF said Wednesday. Swathes of forest continue to be flattened each year — mainly due to industrial-scale agriculture — as biodiversity-rich areas are cleared to create space for livestock and crops. Analysis by WWF […]

Environmental groups, big ag unite for Amazon in Brazil

BRASILÍA, Brazil (AFP) — An unprecedented coalition of 230 environmental groups and Brazilian agrobusiness companies have sent an open letter to President Jair Bolsonaro urging him to fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition brings together a disparate group of members ranging from the World Wildlife Fund to the world’s biggest meat processing company, JBS, which has itself been accused of contributing to deforestation. The coalition sent Brazil’s far-right […]

Brazilian Amazon fires near level of 2019 crisis

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month was the second-highest in a decade for August, nearing the crisis levels that unleashed a flood of international condemnation last year, official figures showed Tuesday. Fires meanwhile tripled year-on-year in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, according to data based on satellite images from Brazil’s national space agency, causing alarm on a new front. Despite guarantees from President Jair […]

Amazon fires a ‘lie’ says Brazil’s Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said it is a “lie” that fires are ravaging the Amazon rainforest, despite data from his own government showing the number of blazes is rising. The far-right leader has faced international condemnation for presiding over huge fires and rising deforestation in the Amazon — criticism he took issue with in a speech to a video conference of countries that share the world’s biggest rainforest. […]

Fires triple in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands in 2020

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — The number of forest fires in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, has nearly tripled in 2020 compared to the same period last year, according to satellite data released Thursday. Brazil’s national space agency, INPE, identified 3,506 fires from January 1 to July 22 in the Pantanal, a 192 percent increase from 2019 and the most for the period since records began in 1998. The trend is all the […]