Indigenous groups in Brazil are demanding justice after a spate of killings allegedly linked to land disputes left three people dead and two injured in the space of just two days, and raised concerns about escalating violence against native peoples throughout the country. Janildo Oliveira Guajajara was shot and killed by unknown assailants in an […]
Three teams of video journalists descended on the Brazilian Amazon amid some of its worst-ever fires to capture efforts of Indigenous rainforest “guardians” to protect it from destruction. They returned with award-winning reporting, but also a deeper understanding of the region and its people, and of how to bring the climate change story closer to home. They share their
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has asked for $US1 billion a year in foreign aid to reduce illegal deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. But under Bolsonaro deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has soared, jeopardising the livelihoods of some of the world s most vulnerable indigenous communities.
The BBC s chief environment correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, has been trying to find out what this has meant for an Amazon tribe he first met back in 2010.
Jungle in the Amazonian rainforest.
Photo: Unsplash / Nathalia Segato
I felt like Mr Bean, the rubber-faced TV character played by Rowan Atkinson, when I first visited the Awa people over a decade ago.
there is abundant proof of the men s activities. even notes on how many trees they cut down. this wood goes to local cattle ranchers, who build fences around their area and they re selling the stakes for those fences. and it even shows right here how much money they re making. the leader, whose name is laercio guajajara, lectures the suspects. why did you agree to do this work? because, he says, i don t have anything. laercio says more than a third of his ancestral homeland has been destroyed. scientists now worry that the amazon may be at a tipping point. after raging fires and an increase in illegal logging, deforestation doubled in january compared to last year. after forcing the loggers to burn down their own camp, laercio s group brings them to brazil s federal police. less than two months after we leave, laercio is ambushed and shot by loggers, his deputy