Environment

The pro-government majority in the lower house of the congress has rushed through a bill (PL3792) which will virtually eliminate the need for Brazil’s environmental licences for a wide range of economic activities, opening the way for widespread exploitation. The activities which will be freed from licensing include agriculture, cattle raising, logging, dam and road building, sewage plants and water management.

The documentary Mothers of the Land serves as an eye-opening report on the daily lives of female farmers in Peru, and how their traditional way of life is threatened by the modern maladies of capitalism and climate change.

Communities awaiting compensation from the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history say they’re being stymied by a convoluted legal process that favors those responsible.

In Mexico, a university-educated, small-scale peasant farmer came up with an untried innovative solution that not only restores degraded land to productivity, but also greatly enhances soil carbon storage, provides a valuable new crop, and even offers a hopeful diet for diabetics.

'Gold, Oil and Avocados, A Recent History of Latin America in Sixteen Commodities' by Andy Robinson is a detailed account of export extractivism in Latin America, offering rich context.

The key question of the day was how creativity, imagination and play can help researchers both to carry out and communicate environmental research to the public. How, we asked, can collaborations between researchers and artists deepen our understanding of today’s ecological challenges?

Against a backdrop of dramatic photos of environmental destruction in the Amazon, Brazilian indigenous and NGO leaders call for ecocide to be prosecuted.

xtreme weather conditions, from massive flooding to severe water shortages, have rocked cities and small communities alike in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon this year, a trend experts attribute to climate change and human actions.

Amazônia Latitude's Marcos Colón reports from Glasgow on the cognitive dissonance that affects COP26, where those most concerned about and those most affected by climate change are effectively excluded from the conference and governments and business bandy technological fixes.

In Guatemala, environmental defenders are criminalised, evicted, beaten, imprisoned and sometimes killed. It is one of the most dangerous places in the world for those who seek to defend their communities, lands and environment.