🧵 If reforestation could work anywhere, it's in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. I followed two reforestation projects for 3+ years to find out why it's so hard. Threats at gunpoint, botanical mysteries, here's what I found. 1/

reuters.com/investigates/s… In August 2019, fires surged in the Amazon. I saw firsthand the scenes that so outraged the public.

As I looked ahead to the next year, I wanted to try to report on those seeking to restore the rainforest, rather than only reporting on destruction. 2/

reuters.com/article/uk-bra…

🧵Researchers are betting that the next pathogen to spark a pandemic will come from the Amazon rainforest. And yet that risk is ill-understood

For this story, I traveled to bat caves and sites of deforestation in Brazil. Here's the story behind the story reuters.com/investigates/s… I followed bat researchers to the massive Planaltina cavern near the Transamazon highway in Northern Brazil. The cave extends more than 1.5 km underground and is home to thousands of bats. 2/

The lungs of the Earth will breathe easier tonight 🌳 🌳 🌳

Lula officially wins the Brazil presidential election promising to stop deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, after four years of surging destruction under Bolsonaro. 🧵 1/ Context on why this election meant so much for the Amazon rainforest 2/ reuters.com/world/americas…

I can summarize the collective response to my story last week as "WTF?" Brazil's Bolsonaro bolstered the environmental fines system, a move that could help protect the Amazon. It can be hard to understand what the govt is doing. Here's a 🧵w/ some context reuters.com/business/healt… First, a note on environmental fines. Yes, the % of fines collected in Brazil has always been low. But talk to any Ibama agent: Fines do matter. Even if someone doesn't pay a fine, it is on their record and can prevent them from selling their crops for export or getting a loan.

What happened out in the jungle? 19 months after Brazil deployed troops to protect the Amazon rainforest, there is high deforestation and a massive bill. I spoke to dozens of sources to find out why they failed: an ill-prepared, reluctant military THREAD reuters.com/investigates/s… Despite asking many times in my 10 months of investigating, the military refused to let me accompany any field operations. I did at least interview a Vice Admiral w/ the Defense Ministry who gave insight into how the military sees the operation as protecting Brazil's sovereignty.

President Jair Bolsonaro's speech to the UN just now, a significant portion of which is dedicated to defending Brazil's environmental record. Largely the same arguments he has been making domestically but just on the global stage. Bolsonaro said that Brazil is the victim of a brutal misinformation campaign about the Amazon. While the govt has faced fierce criticism on it, it's unclear what the incorrect information is. Fires in the Amazon are at a 10-year high YTD and an all-time high in the Pantanal.

PSA for those monitoring Amazon forest fires: Yes there has been a problem with the official Brazil govt fire data from Inpe since August 16. Most of the data is missing for that day, so in the official table it shows an unusually low number. queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/port… Speaking with Brazil govt space agency INPE, there was a problem with the transmission from the NASA satellite (which monitors for fires) for that day. INPE is attempting to get the data another way and retroactively correct in the next few days ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/alerts-and-iss…

More worrying signs about fire season in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. There were 28% more fires in July than a year ago, official government data released today show. THREAD 1/ reuters.com/article/us-bra… On July 30, a whopping 1000 fires were detected in a ONE day, a record for any day in the month of July since 2005. “It’s a terrible sign,” said Ane Alencar, science director @IPAM_Amazonia Satellites detect areas of raised heat and a fire must have an edge 30+ meters wide. 2/

In this year's Global Witness report on environment/land defenders being killed (212 this year), I'm struck by the climate framing: Those killed are on the front lines of the climate crisis, putting lives on the line to stop its drivers like deforestation globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/e… Mining industry was most to blame, connected to the deaths of 50 defenders in 2019. Large-scale agriculture connected to 34 deaths.

“Amazon under Bolsonaro: Indigenous by the world’s largest cache of niobium dream of tourism, not mining” Front page of @folha today. It’s not easy to keep environment on the agenda with COVID etc. So it’s good to see that @folha is restarting its “Amazon under Bolsonaro” series, after 3-4 months on pause.

Amazon rainforest fires in Brazil are up 20% in June, although that pales in comparison to the peak last year, it's a worrying sign for worse months to come. Here's a thread on what you might want to know (There is even COVID implications) 1/ uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bra… June fires were up to the highest level since June 2007. But keep in mind June is not that bad of a month for fires usually. The fires in June averaged 75 per day, compared to nearly 1000 per day in August 2019 when fires peaked and grabbed national attention. 2/

My exclusive out this morning: European institutional investors managing more than $2 trillion will pull money out of Brazil if action isn’t taken to stop soaring deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and other destruction mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id… 1/ These investors go further in their threats than those who expressed concern and called for urgent action before, making clear what could trigger them to sell off their holdings linked to Brazil. 2/

Exclusive: Flush with corruption cash, Brazilian states step up deforestation fight. My story today with a touch of irony that the money going to protect the rainforest is coming from a settlement with an oil company. reuters.com/article/us-bra… 1/ “The transfer of money from the Petrobras Fund comes at an opportune time. The states can fill the vacuum and act as a counterpoint to the federal government,” Ana Karine Pereira, an environmental policy professor at University of Brasilia, told me 2/

And the other shoe drops. The rest of the leadership of Brazil's environmental enforcement team was dismissed today, after the boss was fired two weeks ago over a dramatic televised raid on illegal miners that displeased the government. noticias.uol.com.br/colunas/rubens… @rubensvalente 1/ In addition to new chief who is a member of the military police, another military police reserve colonel will fill the role of one of the two guys fired today. The government of Bolsonaro is full of military/police types, generally considered loyal to the right-wing President 2/

The city of Brasilia was inaugurated 60 years ago today. I’ve been here 5% of that time, enough to vouch for it being a strange place, like a Disney’s tomorrowland artificially created in the middle of Brazil. Here are a couple recs if you want a feel for it. First a book called Free City by @joao_almino, fiction with a good English translation, about the era in which Brasilia was built, giving an idea of what a crazy endeavor it was, a chaotic time with people moving in from all over to the middle of nowhere amazon.com/dp/B01IITGOM2/…

To follow up on this story about the firing of Brazil's top environmental enforcement official, the new man announced today to fill the job is a Sao Paulo military police colonel. reuters.com/article/us-bra… The new head of enforcement has been serving as the head of environmental enforcement agency Ibama in the largest rainforest state of Amazonas since September.

Olha gente, esse artigo agora na capa do @folha é baseado numa tradução errado do chinês para português. Se você li isso em chinês original, o oficial chinês não falou que vai comprar soja americano por causa do 'segurança.' @nelson_de_sa www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/nelson… O assunto da coletiva foi 'segurança alimentar' mas tem um desconexão em logica falando que isso quer disser China vai comprar soja do EUA por causa do segurança. O oficial chinês falou que exportações do soja de EUA deve subir (ele notou o acordo EUA-China na guerra comercial)

Exclusive today: Brazil will cut back efforts to fight environmental crimes amid coronavirus as it cannot send roughly 1/3 of its agents to the field because they are in risk categories for developing severe COVID-19. reuters.com/article/us-hea… Key background is that Brazil enviro agency Ibama hasn't hired new agents in years and therefore it's rapidly aging. This 1/3 of agents are close to 60 years old or have other risk factors.

ICYMI, Trump is not the only one picking fights with China over coronavirus, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro's son Eduardo angered the Chinese when he retweeted an alt-right website founder saying the pandemic was the Chinese Communist parties fault.

https://twitter.com/rodrigodasilva/status/1240047904183721984

The Chinese ambassador to Brazil responded By saying he demanded an immediate retraction and apology to the Chinese people, and that they would register protests with the BZ foreign ministry.

https://twitter.com/WanmingYang/status/1240441812105519109

Reuters Exclusive today on Brazil exporting thousands of shipments of wood to the U.S. and Europe in the past year without proper approval from environment agency Ibama, raising the risk they're linked to deforestation. Story by me: reuters.com/article/us-bra… Problem came to light after US and other customs authorities got a handful of shipments without the Brazil enviro agency approvals, after which enviro agency did away with export authorizations altogether TLDR: Problem with the requirement, then just get rid of the requirement.

Brazil preliminary deforestation data for the Amazon rainforest for Oct was only up 5% year-on-year, after massive increases over the past few months. This was expected with the onset of the rainy season reuters.com/article/us-bra… 1/ Ecologist Philip Fearnside emphasized a 5% increase is still an increase (perhaps the larger jumps have desensitized people), that the dry season is really what counts for deforestation and the numbers are very bad for the year 2/