The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest, home to 25% of the world’s biodiversity. It’s also the world’s carbon sink, absorbing CO2 and regulating global warming.
Much of it is meant to be protected, yet a fifth of its trees have been logged in the past 50 years due to soya and livestock farming, roads, mining and hydro-electric projects. That has soared since President Jair Bolsonaro took power.
At Cop26, Brazil promised to end illegal logging by 2030. Global Governments pledged billions to recover deforested lands and support indigenous people, but for the 420 tribes who have lived and worked the forest for 11,000 years, the promises ring hollow.
For Marli Yontep Krikati, enough was enough. She stepped up as the first woman in her Amazon village to lead the forest guardians. After several recent murders, the men declared the job too dangerous. The Guardian travelled to meet her.
Logging in the Amazon has hit the highest levels since 2006.
Brazil was one of 100 countries to sign up to halt deforestation at Cop26, but is it already too late?
The statistics are disturbing.
The effects can be seen from space. An astronaut on the International Space Station sent a plea to Cop26 for drastic action.
Politicians promised to help.
But Indigenous tribes were left disappointed, claiming it was “a negotiation of bad behaviour without any representation of the will of the people”.
For the Amazon’s former police chief it was personal. Weeks after busting an illegal logging operation he was fired. He claims corruption cost him his job, and he saved a special comment for the politicians, noting that the EU is the largest buyer of the Amazon’s illegally harvested wood.
Deep the Amazon, life has never been harder for the three million indigenous tribespeople. Despite living three days’ boat trip from the nearest city, Covid has arrived. Isolated and without electricity, most were unaware the pandemic even existed.
The UN has described climate change as defining issue of our time. It has become the epicentre of geo-politics.
Oovvuu funds its own originals video to investigate the big issues, such as the effects if political action fails. The experts are clear. The Amazon will die, so will Australia’s reefs and global cities Hong Kong, Mumbai and Bangkok will disappear under water, followed by Florida by 2100.
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