Andre Cabette Fabio

Chief Farid Mariano walks proudly amid the trees, vegetables and roots growing in the Laranjeira Ñanderu territory in Brazil's Midwest, retaken by his Guarani and Kaiowá community from a private rancher.

Reoccupied by the Indigenous community in the last two decades, the degraded land has been restored for farming with a lot of hard work. 

Delegates at the U.N. COP29 in Azerbaijan have agreed on rules for governing the global carbon market, which allows governments and companies to curb emissions by trading carbon credits rather than necessarily cutting them directly.

The breakthrough comes nearly ten years after the idea for a central, U.N.-managed market was touted under Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit the rise in global temperatures.

As global leaders gather at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's government hopes the launch of its Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty will become the hallmark of its G20 presidency.

Championed by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the alliance that launched last week has so far drawn 81 participating members pledging to lift 500 million people out of poverty and hopes to reach its target of 100 countries in the coming months

Conservation efforts and climate finance in South America are too focused on iconic biodiversity hot spots, like the Amazon rainforest, at the peril of crucial desert, wetland and other ecosystems, environmentalists and Indigenous leaders warn.

From the Atacama desert in Chile, to mountainous paramos in Colombia and Brazil's tropical wetlands and savannas, more attention should be paid to other ecosystems, which are too often sidelined in nature policies, funding and climate talks.

Women are often on the frontlines of protecting Latin America's crucial biodiversity, from guarding rivers against pollution to keeping illegal gold miners and oil companies at bay in the Amazon rainforest.

And at the United Nations COP16 nature summit this week in Cali, Colombia, women are well represented in political leadership, too. 

For more than a month, a team of some 270 firefighters has been battling a wall of flames consuming two Indigenous territories on the edge of Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

Their focus is to protect villages from the rapidly advancing fire line, said Ana Maria Canut, chief of operations in Mato Grosso state for Prevfogo, Brazil's main forest firefighting organisation.

In the world’s largest tropical wetland, Brazil’s Pantanal, a group of Kalunga firefighters dig a firebreak line between the forest and the flames as they battle a wildfire spreading over the region.

The firefighters are descendants of enslaved Africans that first set up Brazil's "quilombo" settlements three centuries ago.

The natural environment is crucial to human life on the planet, from protection against diseases to the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat.

But despite decades of conservation efforts, biodiversity is still in rapid decline.

Santo Antônio is one of three mega dams located in the depths of Brazil's lush Amazon rainforest that were once hailed the future of the country's green energy production. 

The "run-of-river" mega dams -- whose turbines are moved by natural river flows rather than water cascading from towering reservoirs  -- were Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's bet on a green future when he was first in power in the 2000s.

A new U.S.-backed initiative to disrupt illicit financial flows from nature crimes such as illegal logging and mining in the Amazon rainforest has been welcomed by security experts, but the effort could be hampered by lawlessness and state weakness.

Launched by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in July, the plan is to boost cooperation in South America to tackle an illicit industry worth billions of dollars that is leaving a trail of destruction in the Amazon rainforest.