rainforest – Page 2 – Desdemona Despair

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, February 2008 - February 2023. After a drop in January 2023, deforestation in the Amazon returned to growth in February. According to Imazon data, 325 km² of forest were cleared in February 2023, equivalent to the size of Belo Horizonte. This was the biggest devastation recorded for February in 16 years, since the research institute deployed its SAD satellite imagery monitoring system. Graphic: Imazon

April 15, 2023

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rose by 14 percent in March 2023 – “The new government needs to act urgently to rebuild its capacity for repression to environmental crime, which had been totally destroyed by the Bolsonaro government”

By Steven Grattan 7 April 2023 São Paulo (Reuters) – Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose 14 percent in March from the previous year, preliminary official data showed on Friday, highlighting the continued challenges for the new leftist government. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office on 1 January 2023, pledging to end deforestation […]

A sign that reads in Portuguese “Justice for Dom and Bruno” and with images of the British journalist Dom Phillips, on the left, and the indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira is displayed on the Arcos da Lapa aqueduct during a protest by environmental groups in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 26 June 2022. Brazilian police said Monday, 23 January 2023, they planned to indict Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, a Colombian fish trader, as the mastermind of the murders. Photo: Bruna Prado / AP Photo

January 30, 2023

Brazil police: Businessman ordered killings of men in Amazon

By Fabiano Maisonnave 23 January 2023 SAO PAULO (AP) – Brazilian police said Monday they planned to indict a Colombian fish trader as the mastermind of last year’s slayings of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips. Ruben Dario da Silva Villar provided the ammunition to kill the pair, made phone calls to […]

Carbon credits claimed by Verra rainforest carbon credits vs. real emissions reductions. At least 90 percent of claimed credits do not represent real emissions reductions. Graphic: The Guardian

January 30, 2023

More than 90 percent of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows – “It’s disappointing and scary”

By Patrick Greenfield 18 January 2023 (The Guardian) – The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation. The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) […]

A person wearing a carved wooden mask takes part with other people in a march during COP15, the two-week U.N. Biodiversity summit in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 10 December 2022. Photo: Christinne Muschi / REUTERS

December 10, 2022

Activists dressed as birds and trees rally for nature at COP15 in Montreal – “We see what is happening and it is clearly not sufficient compared to our ambitions and our priorities”

By Gloria Dickie 10 December 2022 MONTREAL (Reuters) – Hundreds of people on Saturday braved sub-zero temperatures to march the streets of Montreal, the host city of this year’s U.N. biodiversity summit, demanding a strong new deal to protect nature worldwide. Wearing costumes to look like birds, trees, and caribou, activists said the COP15 summit could fail […]

Number of Western Monarch butterflies (left) and butterfly surveys (right), 1997-2021. In the western United States, the number of individual butterflies has been steadily decreasing over the past four decades, at a rate of around 1.6% every year, according to a March 2021 study in the journal Science. The iconic Monarch butterfly is one of the species in trouble. Warmer autumn temperatures, an effect of climate change, may be interfering with the butterflies’ hibernation-like period known as diapause. So rather than slowing down ahead of winter, the insects are staying awake longer, expending more energy, and eventually starving to death. In July 2022, the migratory monarch was added to the IUCN’s global endangered species list. Graphic: Catherine Tai / Reuters

December 10, 2022

The collapse of insects – “They’re the fabric tethering together every freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem across the planet”

By Julia Janicki, Gloria Dickie, Simon Scarr and Jitesh Chowdhury 6 December 2022 (Reuters) – As a boy in the 1960s, David Wagner would run around his family’s Missouri farm with a glass jar clutched in his hand, scooping flickering fireflies out of the sky. “We could fill it up and put it by our […]

Smoke rises from a forest fire in the Transamazonica highway region, in the municipality of Labrea, Amazonas state, Brazil, 17 September 2022. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon slowed slightly last year, a year after a 15-year high, according to closely watched numbers published Wednesday, 30 November 2022. Photo: Edmar Barros / AP Photo

December 5, 2022

Amazon deforestation in Brazil remains near 15-year high in 2022 – “If da Silva wants to decrease forest destruction by 2023, he must have zero tolerance for environmental crime from Day One of his administration”

By Fabiano Maisonnave 30 November 2022 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon slowed slightly last year, a year after a 15-year high, according to closely watched numbers published Wednesday. The data was released by the National Institute for Space Research. The agency’s Prodes monitoring system shows the rainforest lost an area […]

Deforested area of Amazon rainforest in Brazil, 2006-2021, with large increases shown during the Bolsonaro regime. Data: Brazil National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Graphic: DW

November 19, 2022

Lula insists “Brazil is back” at UN climate summit

By Stuart Braun 16 November 2022 (DW) – One of the most-watched visitors to the UN climate summit in Egypt this week has been incoming Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — more commonly referred to as Lula. With his successful election campaign having included a promise to arrest record deforestation in the Amazon, Lula carried huge expectations into the yearly climate summit […]

Components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties, 1960-2021 and projected to 2022. Components are presented individually for (a) fossil CO2 and cement carbonation emissions (EFOS), (b) growth rate in atmospheric CO2 concentration (GATM), (c) emissions from land-use change (ELUC), (d) the land CO2 sink (SLAND), (e) the ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN), and (f) the budget imbalance that is not accounted for by the other terms. Positive values of SLAND and SOCEAN represent a flux from the atmosphere to land or the ocean. All data are in GtC yr−1 with the uncertainty bounds representing ±1 standard deviation in shaded colour. Data sources are as in Fig. 3. The red dots indicate our projections for the year 2022, and the red error bars the uncertainty in the projections. Graphic: Friedlingstein, et al., 2022 / Earth System Science Data

November 19, 2022

Global Carbon Budget 2022: Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels – No sign of decrease in global CO2 emissions – “This year we see yet another rise in global fossil CO2 emissions, when we need a rapid decline”

11 November 2022 (Global Carbon Project) – Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels – with no sign of the decrease that is urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, according to the Global Carbon Project science team (Global Carbon Budget 2022). If current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50% chance […]

Mexican journalists gather around pictures of murdered colleagues as they protest the recent killings of photojournalist Margarito Martinez and journalist Lourdes Maldonado, in Veracruz, Mexico, on 25 January 2022. Photo: Yahir Ceballos / Reuters

November 13, 2022

CPJ’s Global Impunity Index 2022: Vast majority of journalists’ killers go free – Of the 263 journalists murdered in the last decade, 78 percent were assassinated with complete impunity

By Jennifer Dunham1 November 2022 (CPJ) – The vast majority of killers of journalists continue to get away with murder, according to CPJ’s 2022 Global Impunity Index. In nearly 80% of the 263 cases of journalists murdered in retaliation for their work globally over the past decade, the perpetrators have faced no punishment. Somalia remains […]

Satellite view of deforestation in Rondônia state, Brazil, 1975-2001. Data gathered by several satellites in the Landsat series of spacecraft shows enormous tracts of forest disappearing in Rondonia, Brazil from 1975 through 2001. The human phenomenon of deforestation starts, especially in the dense tropical forests of Brazil, when systematic cutting of a road opens new territory to potential deforestation by penetrating into new areas. Clearing of vegetation along the sides of those roads then tends to fan out to create a pattern akin to a fish skeleton. As new paths appear in the woods, more areas become vulnerable. Finally, the spaces between the “skeletal bones” fall to defoliation. Photo: Joycelyn Thomson / Horace Mitchell / Darrel Williams / NASA / GSFC

October 29, 2022

Amazon governor revokes Amazon rainforest protection in re-election bid – “It will make it more difficult to expel the invaders. They will destroy what’s left.”

By Fabiano Maisonnave 29 October 2022 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – In an effort to get more votes and win reelection, the governor of the Brazilian state of Rondônia on Friday revoked the protection of a large swath of Amazon forest. Marcos Rocha, a staunch ally of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, signed a decree that […]