By Adriana Brasileiro29 November 2014 RIO DE JANEIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – São Paulo, Brazil’s drought-hit megacity of 20 million, has about two months of guaranteed water supply remaining as it taps into the second of three emergency reserves, officials say. The city began using its second so-called “technical reserve” 10 days ago to prevent […]
By Rhett Butler 26 November 2014 (mongabay.com) – Preliminary data released by the Brazilian government suggests that deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest slowed 18 percent over the past year. Figures published Wednesday by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) show that 4,848 square kilometers (1,871 square miles) of forest — an area about the size […]
17 November 2014 (Washington Post) – São Paulo’s drought: Five major reservoirs that serve water to the São Paulo metropolitan area are critically below their normal operating levels, 17 November 2014. Jaguari is at 10.8 percent of normal operating level, Jacareí is at 10.8 percent, Cachoeira is at 9.2 percent, Atibainha is at 4.4 percent, […]
By Natalia Ramos26 November 2014 (AFP News) – He cast his rod happily here for 30 years — but where a river once teemed with fish, Brazilian fisherman Ernane da Silva these days stares out over a valley of weeds and bone dry, sun-parched land. The southeastern state of São Paulo is suffering its worst […]
By Dom Phillips 18 November 2014 ATIBAIA, Brazil (Washington Post) – Seen from a micro-light aircraft, flying low near this small town in Brazil’s interior, the scale of the water crisis blighting São Paulo, a megalopolis 40 miles away, was frighteningly clear. Four of the five reservoirs in an interlinked system that supplies 6.5 million […]
By Adriana Gomez Licon8 November 2014 ITU, Brazil (AP) – It’s been nearly a month since Diomar Pereira has had running water at his home in Itu, a commuter city outside São Paulo that is at the epicenter of the worst drought to hit southeastern Brazil in more than eight decades. Like others in this […]
By Jonathan Watts31 October 2014 (Rio de Janeiro) – The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists. In a new report, Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science […]
Jaguari Reservoir, 16 August 2013 Jaguari Reservoir, 3 August 2014 By Brad Plumer 23 October 2014 (Vox) – São Paulo, in southeast Brazil, is the largest city in South America and the 7th largest metropolitan region in the world, with more than 21 million people. It’s the engine behind Brazil’s richest state, which is […]
By Jonathan Watts 19 October 2014 Rio de Janeiro (The Guardian) – The deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has accelerated rapidly in the past two months, underscoring the shortcomings of the government’s environmental policies. Satellite data indicates a 190% surge in land clearance in August and September compared with the same period last year as […]
By Diego Leal and David Salisbury 9 Septemer 2014 (Forest Trends) – Always carrying a sheaf of legal documents and maps, Peruvian indigenous leader Edwin Chota tirelessly traveled from his native community of Alto Tamaya – Saweto to the city of Pucallpa, Ucayali, using the seven-day boat trip as an opportunity to plan his next […]
