Enjoy more audio and podcasts oniOSorAndroid.
Cousins Almir and Henrique Suruí were born in the following decade. As boys they saw the arrival of thousands of settlers, the conversion of tracts of forest to farmland and the death of hundreds of Suruí from disease and violence. As men they became caciques. But their paths diverged in the mid-2000s. Almir tried to protect the forest and find a sustainable income for his village, Lapetanha, home to 115 of the tribe’s 1,500 members. Henrique got involved in illegal logging and mining, which led to his expulsion. He founded a village elsewhere in the territory, which spans nearly a thousand square miles in Rondônia and Mato Grosso.
As Amazon forest-to-savanna tipping point looms, solutions remain elusive
by Shanna Hanbury on 23 February 2021
Leading scientists project that if an additional 3-8% of rainforest cover is lost in the Amazon, it may overshoot a forest-to-degraded-savanna tipping point. That shift could mean mega-drought, forest death, and release of great amounts of stored carbon to the atmosphere from southern, eastern and central Amazonia.
Despite this warning, Brazilian Amazon deforestation hit an 11-year high in 2020. Government clampdowns on environmental crime greatly decreased deforestation in the past, but Brazil is now facing a political backlash led by President Jair Bolsonaro, resulting in agribusiness and mining expansion and deforestation.