"Deforestation of the Amazon hit a new record during the first half of 2022, the Brazilian Space Agency reported Friday, deepening concerns that the vast rainforest’s critical role in protecting the planet’s health will be irreparably damaged."
As Brazil’s wetlands burned and as the country illegally shipped wood from the Amazon and scaled back environmental enforcement amid the pandemic, award-winning journalist Jake Spring of Reuters was there, telling tough, sometimes dangerous stories. Spring shares insights into his “just the facts” reporting, including the surprises and the lessons, and offers some practical advice in this Inside Story Q&A.
In 2006, a local government council in Pennsylvania concerned about sewage sludge dumping enacted the Western legal system’s first formal “rights of nature” instrument. Today, numerous countries have laws recognizing specific rights or even legal personhood for nature. As legal expert Alice Bleby explains, this new perspective arises from a wide range of contexts and plays out in many different ways.
"Gathered at a cemetery on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, friends and relatives paid their final respects on Sunday to British journalist Dom Phillips, killed in the Brazilian Amazon while researching for a book about how to save the world’s largest rainforest."
"Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Petro has promised to limit agribusiness expansion into the forest, and create reserves where Indigenous communities and others are allowed to harvest rubber, acai and other non-timber forest products."
"Brazil's former president and front-runner in October elections, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, would seek "net zero deforestation" in the country if elected, a political plan published Tuesday said."
"The family of a missing journalist says they have been told by Brazilian authorities that two bodies have been found tied to a tree in the Amazon rainforest. The report came more than a week after the journalist and a Brazilian government official went missing."
"Search teams found a backpack, laptop and other personal items that belonged to Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, who went missing in a remote area of Brazil’s Amazon a week ago, Federal Police said Sunday night."
The Society of Environmental Journalists joins journalism organizations and many other individuals and groups in calling for Brazilian authorities to redouble their search for British freelance journalist Dom Phillips (pictured) and Brazilian Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira, with whom Phillips was traveling on an assignment.
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