By Emma Marris29 September 2014 COCHA CASHU BIOLOGICAL STATION, Peru (National Geographic News) – Ernesto Ráez-Luna, a prominent Peruvian ecologist and environmentalist, has spent his career fighting for the Amazon rain forest. In 2011, he was appointed as an adviser to Peru’s Ministry of the Environment. In this role, Ráez-Luna was involved in organizing the […]
By Drew Sterwald September 2014 (Pinnacle) – Trees and creek banks stained black with petroleum. Lakes too polluted to fish. Villagers suffering skin and organ ailments associated with contaminated water. This was just part of the evidence Shauna Stoeger (’14, M.S., Forensic Studies) uncovered when she spent four months in remote Amazonian villages to investigate […]
By Rena Silverman19 September 2014 (NPR) – They’re silvery and stunning — and their beauty bears a message. “Genesis” is a new exhibit of more than 200 black-and-white images from the noted Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. He wants to show us what the world and its peoples look like now, how climate change has already […]
By Marianna Musset 15 September 2014 (tcktcktck.org) – The ongoing drought crisis in São Paulo has reached a critical level that continues towards rock bottom. Brazil’s largest city, home to more than 9 million people, could run dry in the next 100 days according to Brazil’s Public Ministry. The Cantareira reservoir which supplies 45% of […]
By Jan Rocha15 September 2014 (theguardian.com) – The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapour clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the centre and south of Brazil. Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of […]
By Amel Ahmed11 September 2014 (Al Jazeera) – The rate of destruction blighting the world’s largest rain forest spiked by nearly a third last year, according to new data released by the Brazilian government. Satellite data showed that 2,315 square miles of forest had been cleared from the Brazilian Amazon in the 12 months through […]
Translated by Fabrício Ferreira8 September 2014 (Agência Brasil) – Activists from the Friends of the Manatee Association (Ampa) have placed a 12-meter-tall inflatable dolphin dummy outside the National Congress. The act was staged as part of a campaign entitled Red Alert, which aims to urge the Ministry of Environment to take action and bring into […]
By Ludovica Iaccino9 September 2014 (IBT) – Four anti-logging activists have been slain in Peru, officials have said. The four men, who belonged to the Ashaninka community, were on their way to Brazil to attend a meeting on how to prevent illegal logging in Peru. According to other activists, the men had received several death […]
By Leila Salazar-Lopez11 August 2014 (Amazon Watch) – Recently I had the great honor of meeting Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a shaman and internationally renowned spokesman for the Yanomami people of Brazil, while he was on a global speaking tour with our friends at Survival International. It was disturbing to learn that Davi had been receiving […]
My guest post is up at Cusco Running Club: Global Warming and Peru. Check it out if you’re interested in the effects of abrupt climate change in the rural Andes: Global warming is real You may have heard that global warming isn’t happening, or that it’s a hoax, or that it has “paused” in recent […]
