More About Brazil

Doubt, Anger Over Brazil Dams As Work Begins Along Amazon Tributary, Many Question Human, Environmental Costs

Porto Velho, Brazil – It is quiet here on the wrong side of progress. Hot wind blows dust across the dry bluffs. The brown river runs wide and placid.

In his painted wooden skiff, Francisco Evangelista de Abreu, a fisherman, motors up-current. Two river dolphins crest and submerge. His mind is elsewhere. The dam is coming.

"I don't know what's going to happen," he said.

Road to oblivion: new highway poses threat to Brazil's uncontacted tribespeople

The uncontacted tribes in the forest borderlands of Peru and Brazil, such as those pictured last week pointing a bow and arrow at a plane, are facing a threat from something beyond their wildest imagining. It comes from a thing of which they've never heard, being built to serve a people who they have no idea even exist.

The Amazonian tribe that hid from the rest of the world - until now

Three near-naked figures are visible in the forest clearing. Two of them are men, their bodies daubed with a red dye, and they are aiming their bows at the sky. A third figure appears to be a woman, her body blackened and only her pale hands and face betraying her natural colour.

This remarkable photograph is the first proof of the existence of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes.

Environmentalists go to court to suspend the auction of Rio Madeira Dam Project

São Paulo and Brasília

The NGO Friends of the Earth - Brazilian Amazon filed a civil lawsuit on Wednesday (Dec. 5th) in the Federal Courts, requesting the suspension of the Santo Antônio Hydro Power Plant auction, in the Madeira River (state of Rondônia, in the Amazon), scheduled for December 10th .

Coalition Letter to Brazilian Foreign Minister re Madeira River Complex

Celso Amorim, Foreign Relations Minister, Brazil
Dilma Roussef, Presidential Chief-of-Staff, Brazil

Cc: David Choquehuanca, Foreign Relations Minister, Bolivia
Juan Pablo Ramos Morales, Vice Minister for Biodiversity, Forestry Resources and Environment, Bolivia
Marina Silva, Environment Minister, Brazil

Your Excellencies:

We are writing to express our support for the process initiated in Au

Brazilian ministers claim victory in war on illegal loggers

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – The destruction of the world's largest rainforest last year fell to its lowest rate in nearly two decades, according to figures announced by the Brazilian government.

Between August 2005 and July 2006, around 5,400 square miles of Amazon forest were felled - a 25% reduction on the previous 12 months, government officials said.

Go-ahead for Controversial Pipeline

Brazil's Environmental Protection Agency Ibama has said it has licensed a unit of the state-run oil company Petrobras to start building a controversial gas pipeline cutting through pristine Amazon forest.

Petrobras and environmentalists have quarrelled since 2001 over the planned 550-kilometre (345-mile) pipeline from the oil- and gas-producing region of Urucu in Amazonas state to the city of Porto Velho in Rondonia s

Environmental Efforts Can't Curb Social Impact of Amazon Pipeline

Manaus, Brazil - While Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras has taken great pains to limit the environmental impact of gas pipelines in the Amazon region, it has proven more difficult to curb the social repercussions of large-scale projects in the midst of dire poverty.

The discovery in 1986 of natural gas in Urucú, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, was considered a potential boon for both the economy and the en

Remembering Chico Mendes -- The Martyr of the Amazon Lives On

The 1988 murder of Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes, in Brazil’s Amazon River basin was a major international story.

Remembering Sister Dorothy Stang

When I met Sister Dorothy Stang, I knew I was encountering someone remarkable. I met her in Belém, the capital of Pará state in northern Brazil. Belém has more than a million people. It was not the natural habitat for Dayton, Ohio native Dorothy Stang, who had gone to the city to petition the state government.