Brazil

Amazon traders promise to boycott soya from "cheating farmers"

Posted by jossc — 17 April 2009 at 11:48am - Comments

Huge areas in the Amazon rainforest are illegally logged to clear land for soya plantations
Huge areas in the Amazon rainforest are illegally logged to clear land for soya plantations © Greenpeace/Beltra

Some good news just in from Brazil, where soya traders have reinforced their commitment to boycott soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon.

Clearing-cutting to make space for new soya plantations has been one of the main causes of rainforest destruction in recent years, which is why we campaigned successfully for a moratorium (temporary ban) three years ago.

Article tagged as: agriculture, amazon, brazil, carlos minc, deforestation, forests, south america, soya

Climate and people first

Posted by jossc — 2 April 2009 at 10:48am - Comments

Greenpeace action in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

We've got a message for the leaders of the richest nations in the world who are gathering here in London for the G20 meeting to discuss the global economic crisis - put the climate and people first.

15 activists unfurled this 50m x 30m banner from the bridge at the Guanabara bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Article tagged as: brazil, climate change, direct actions, G20, south america

Is the Amazon rainforest doomed? Not if we can help it

Posted by jamie — 12 March 2009 at 3:53pm - Comments

There are some alarming stories in the press today about how much of the Amazon rainforest will be lost due to climate change. According to a new report from the Met Office's Hadley Centre, up to 85 per cent of it will disappear if we see a 4C rise in global temperatures.

It's a nightmare scenario and on the face of it, it makes you wonder if we shouldn't just throw in the towel - I have to admit to the occasional dark thought along those lines myself. But on the contrary, information like this illustrates yet again how crucial it is that we address climate change and deforestation together, and do it now before we get locked in to huge temperature rises.

Article tagged as: amazon, brazil, climate change, deforestation, forests, hadley centre, rainforests

All aboard the Arctic Sunrise in Brazil

Posted by jamie — 20 February 2009 at 12:42pm - Comments

One of the great things about working for an international organisation is that my inbox is constantly filling with emails from around the globe detailing what other Greenpeace offices are working on. A thread I've been following particularly closely is the stream of messages coming from the Arctic Sunrise which is currently back in Brazil on a two-and-a-half month tour of the country.

The purpose of the tour - which goes under the name of 'Save The Planet Now... Or Now!' - is to highlight the important role Brazil (as the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet) can play in fighting it in the lead-up to the UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

Article tagged as: amazon, arctic sunrise, brazil, climate change, forests, ships, south america, videos

How cattle ranches are chewing up the Amazon rainforest

Posted by jamie — 31 January 2009 at 9:38am - Comments
by-nc. Credit: Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

For about three years now, we've been working on curbing the impacts of the soya industry on the Amazon rainforest in Brazil which, before the current moratorium was put into place, was replacing the forest with plantations on a massive scale.

However, there's another agricultural sector cutting deep into the forest which we're also going to tackle: cattle ranching. To assess the scale of the problem, Greenpeace researchers in Brazil have produced a new set of maps showing how the Amazon region has suffered.

Article tagged as: agriculture, amazon, brazil, cattle, climate change, deforestation, emissions, forests

The impacts of Amazon soya are shown on the map

Posted by jamie — 19 January 2009 at 11:27am - Comments

Soya fields adjacent to an area of the Amazon rainforest

The challenges of monitoring the effects of deforestation on the Amazon are immense. The vast areas which need to be covered means it's difficult to keep tabs on what's happening on the remote fringes of the rainforest and news of illegal logging and other environmental damage can take a long time to reach the authorities, if they find out at all.

To help solve this problem, the Greenpeace team in Brazil has been training local people to map the impacts of the soya industry in the Santarém region of the forest, the heart of soya production in the Amazon. It's a collaborative project with Brazilian organisations Projeto Saude e Alegria (Health and Happiness Project) and the Rural Workers Unions of Santarém and nearby Belterra, training people to use GPS technology to pinpoint the damage caused by intensive agriculture, empowering them to help defend their land and the rainforest.

Article tagged as: agriculture, amazon, brazil, forests, mapping, south america, soya

Hackers help destroy the Amazon rainforest

Posted by jamie — 12 December 2008 at 11:11am - Comments

High-tech smuggling operations may not be what you'd normally associate with the ongoing clearance of the Amazon rainforest, but logging companies intent on plundering it for timber have been using hackers to break into the Brazilian government's sophisticated tracking system and fiddle the records.

To monitor the amount of timber leaving the Amazon state of Pará, the Brazilian environment ministry did away with paper dockets and two years ago introduced an online system. Companies logging the rainforest for timber or charcoal production are only allowed to fell a certain amount of timber every year and this is controlled by the use of transport permits issued by the state government's computer system.

Article tagged as: amazon, brazil, deforestation, forests, hackers, hacking, illegal logging

Brazil sets targets to stop deforestation, but is it enough?

Posted by jamie — 4 December 2008 at 11:42am - Comments

Flying over forest fires in the Amazon © Greenpeace/Beltra

Flying over forest fires in the Amazon © Greenpeace/Beltra

With the current climate talks now underway in Poznan, the Brazilian government has finally fulfilled a promise it made at the previous round of talks in Bali last year and set targets for reducing deforestation in the Amazon. It's great to see they finally have some targets to work towards (and it's been a long time coming) but as is often the way with these political initiatives, it all falls short of what's really needed.

Article tagged as: amazon, amazon fund, brazil, carlos minc, deforestation, forests, forests for climate, lula, poznan

Amazon deforestation gets the Panorama treatment

Posted by jamie — 5 September 2008 at 6:10pm - Comments

If you haven't had your fill of news from the Amazon lately (we've recently had live webcasts and slideshows from regions where fires have swept through), Monday's edition of Panorama is dedicated to the largest rainforest on Earth, and Greenpeace will featured.

Called Can Money Grow On Trees?, it will examine how the rising cost of food is threatening the Amazon as more forest is converted into farmland for cattle ranching - the current dry season provides an excellent opportunity for a bit of fire-based forest clearance. Also included will be the question of whether financial mechanisms (like our own proposal) can be brought in to make forests more valuable if they're left standing.

We haven't seen the final programme, but it's on BBC1 at 8.30pm, with a repeat on Friday 12 September at 12.45am. Of course, you can watch it at anytime on the wondrous iPlayer after transmission (although only if you're in the UK).

Article tagged as: amazon, BBC, brazil, cattle, forests, panorama, south america
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