Foreign investors, including asset management companies and pension funds, now own large stakes, which means that ordinary citizens in the United States and elsewhere are helping fund Amazon deforestation through their investments.
The new Science Panel for the Amazon - modeled on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - aims to consolidate knowledge on the Amazon rainforest and guide future public policies to conserve it.
A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
JBS, Marfrig and Frigol, among the world's biggest meat producers, have been buying cattle from ranches associated with illegal deforestation and slave labor, an investigation by Repórter Brasil has found.
Over the past decade there has been a rise in corporate zero-deforestation commitments, but very few companies have shown progress in meeting their goals of reducing deforestation in their supply chains by 2020.
Newly appointed Minister of Infrastructure Tarcísio Freitas is resolved to build new Amazon roads and railroads, but expresses limited patience for environmental or indigenous concerns.
The benefits of zero-deforestation agreements in the Amazon are being offset by the spillover of deforestation and native vegetation loss into other biomes.
