"More than 300 lobbyists for food and farming organisations have participated at this year’s United Nations climate talks, known as COP30, taking place in the Brazilian Amazon, where agribusiness is the leading cause of deforestation, a new investigation has found."
"Ecuadorians on Sunday rejected their president’s attempt to rewrite the constitution, a move that would likely have doomed the world’s only constitutional recognition of the rights of nature."
"Agribusiness companies enlisted an army of Brazilian social media influencers ahead of the United Nations climate summit, now underway in the Amazonian city of Belém, where the meat industry’s surging greenhouse gas emissions and role in deforestation are high on the agenda."
"Brazil intended this year’s United Nations climate talks now underway in the Amazon rainforest, to be the capstone of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s effort to establish the country as a global environmental leader. Instead, Brazil’s own domestic environmental policy is in disarray, as the summit known as COP30 struggles to offer a counterpoint to the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to promote fossil fuels."
"BHP is liable for the 2015 collapse of a dam in southeastern Brazil, London's High Court ruled on Friday, in a lawsuit the claimants' lawyers previously valued at up to 36 billion pounds ($48 billion)."
With the COP30 U.N. climate talks starting this week in Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon River basin, our Issue Backgrounder points out that now is a critical time to consider a central question: Is the mandate to save the immense Amazon rainforest as a way to combat climate change being irretrievably undermined by the vast, destructive forces bringing about the rainforest’s rapid destruction?
"Brazil is set to unveil an ambitious international plan that would provide up to $4 billion a year to countries that protect their tropical forests. Proponents see it as a potential game-changer for forest conservation, but some ecologists and economists are raising concerns."
"Exxon funded rightwing thinktanks to spread climate change denial across Latin America, according to hundreds of previously unpublished documents that reveal a coordinated campaign to make the global south “less inclined” to support the UN-led climate treaty process."
COP30 negotiators from around the world gather next week in Belém, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River. Our Voices of Environmental Justice columnist Yessenia Funes says it’s a vital opportunity to engage with the Indigenous peoples who help protect the vast rainforest region — even for environmental reporters not there in person. Here’s how to tell their stories.
"Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fell by 11% from August 2024 to July this year, the government said Thursday, even as wildfires tracked by Brazil’s space agency surged to record levels amid a severe drought."
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