Worst drought in decades hits Brazil’s Northeast

By Caroline Stauffer, with additional reporting by Jeb Blount; Editing by Brian Winter and Vicki Allen4 January 2013 SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Northeast is suffering its worst drought in decades, threatening hydro-power supplies in an area prone to blackouts and potentially slowing economic growth in one of the country’s emerging agricultural frontiers. Lack of […]

Swallowing rainforest, cities surge in Amazon

By SIMON ROMERO24 November 2012 PARAUAPEBAS, Brazil (The New York Times) — The Amazon has been viewed for ages as a vast quilt of rain forest interspersed by remote river outposts. But the surging population growth of cities in the jungle is turning that rural vision on its head and alarming scientists, as an array […]

Brazil plans 23 new dams for heart of Amazon rainforest – ‘Wreaking an incalculable human and environmental toll in the Amazon’

By Ben Tavener, Senior Contributing Reporter25 September 2012 RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Brazilian government is planning to build at least 23 new hydroelectric dams in the country’s Amazon region, of which seven are set to be installed in the heart of the region, in previously untouched areas of one of the most biodiverse […]

Graph of the Day: Change in Vegetation Cover by Biome across Latin America, 2001-2010

By Rhett A. Butler, www.mongabay.com20 August 2012 Latin America lost nearly 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) of forest — an area larger than the state of Oregon — between 2001 and 2010, finds a new study [pdf] that is the first to assess both net forest loss and regrowth across the Caribbean, Central and […]

Guyana struggles to invest in climate defenses

By Johann Earle10 September 2012 GEORGETOWN, Guyana (Alertnet) – Guyana has not made the financial investment it needs to cope with worsening floods and rising sea levels, highlighting how poor countries are struggling to make climate change adaptation a spending priority, researchers say. Government funding for sea defences, drainage and irrigation has taken a backseat […]

Brazil’s Belo Monte back on track after court decision overruled

29 August 2012 (mongabay.com) – Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered work on the controversial Belo Monte dam in the Amazon to resume, overturning a lower court order that suspended the project less than two weeks ago. Construction activities by the Norte Energia, the consortium building the dam, resumed immediately, according to the Associated Press. […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of glacier retreat on Puncak Jaya, 1989 and 2009

Glaciers on Puncak Jaya, 1989   Glaciers on Puncak Jaya, 2009 Caption by Adam Voiland, with information from Michael Prentice, Lonnie Thompson, and Andrew Klein 1 September 2012 Tropical and glacier don’t seem like words that belong in the same sentence. But mountain peaks near the equator in South America, Africa, and tropical Asia have […]

Belo Monte Dam suspended by high Brazilian court

By Zachary Hurwitz14 August 2012 Federal Judge Souza Prudente of the Federal Tribunal of Brazil’s Amazon region suspended all work today on the Belo Monte Dam, invalidating the project’s environmental and installation licenses. While the project has been suspended previously on numerous occasions, and those suspensions overturned on political grounds, this latest decision could have […]

In fragmented Brazil forest, few species survive – ‘The results are actually pretty gloomy’

By KELLY SLIVKA14 August 2012 The Atlantic Forest in Brazil, which runs along the country’s southeastern shore near Rio de Janeiro, has been fragmented by centuries of human habitation. While the rain forest originally spanned over half a million square miles – an area comparable to the size of South Africa – almost 90 percent […]

The dam boom in the Amazon

By CHARLES LYONS30 June 2012 A confrontation between the insatiable appetite for energy and the enduring need for habitability is under way in Brazil as it moves aggressively to harness the power of its rivers with plans for dozens of hydroelectric dams. Such projects are engineering and aesthetic marvels that provide hydroelectric power and can […]

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