Andre Cabette Fabio

First the floods - now the fires. 

With hundreds of thousands left homeless after unprecedented floods soaked the south, Brazil is now facing a record run of wildfires, a nation caught on the frontline of climate change.

As drought and floods wreak havoc across Brazil, farmers are feeling the effects of the climate emergency but despite poor harvests and rotting crops, they are fighting to protect their right to fell more trees and convert grasslands.

The southern Rio Grande do Sul state offers a clear example of the damage wrought by consecutive disasters: after prolonged droughts, analysts were predicting a record soybean harvest this year but instead the area was hit by devastating floods in June.

From the vast Amazon rainforest that unfurls across nine South American territories to the tropical forests that shelter mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo and orangutans in Indonesia, forests are key to human life.

But these rich resources are under threat from deforestation driven by mining, land-grabbing, animal grazing and deadly wildfires. And that's bad news for humans and the planet as rainforests are key to reining in runaway climate change.

Five of the world's top banks are failing to implement effective policies to protect the Amazon when financing oil and gas extraction in the region, a report said this week, accusing the financial giants of "greenwashing".

Produced by environmental advocacy group Stand.earth and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), the report urged the banks to stop financing oil and gas extraction to help protect 80% of the world's largest rainforest by 2025.

REALIDADE, Brazil - Behind a narrow border of trees, a crop duster sprays clouds of agrochemicals onto the vast soy fields stretching out on both sides of the BR-319 highway that cuts deep into Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

As the road's asphalt wears thin further north, timber trucks zig-zag to avoid the many potholes along the key transport artery, which spans 885 km (550 miles) and has come to symbolise the tension between infrastructure projects and environmental protection in the world's largest rainforest.

In November, Pedro and two of his sons rushed to the river and sank their mining boat under the brown water to hide it from officials patrolling the Amazon area as Brazil's government cracks down on wildcat gold miners.

Wooden barges like theirs, equipped with suction hoses and other mining machinery, are used to dredge for gold in the region's rivers - a polluting and largely illegal activity that President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva wants to stamp out.

Clothing factories that supply H&M and Zara are buying cotton linked to environmental destruction and land-grabbing in Brazil's Cerrado - a biodiversity hotspot where deforestation is soaring, research by the Earthsight nonprofit has found.

While global concern has focused on the impact of beef and soy farming in the Amazon, deforestation alerts in Brazil's lesser-known Cerrado tropical savannah jumped 44% in 2023, data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) shows.

The Amazon is battling record early-year fires, fuelling fears of a worse climate crisis to come as blazes kill vegetation that is key to absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Fanned by drought, high winds and human felling, the forest is suffering unprecedented fires this early in the year, satellite images show, with the dry season still to reach critical parts of the Amazon.

Brazil's efforts to halt deforestation, and global concerns about climate change and nature loss, are largely focused on the shrinking Amazon rainforest, about 60% of which falls in Brazil.

But while Amazon protections have been achieving positive results over the last year, agricultural expansion - the major cause of deforestation in Brazil - is still on the rise in other parts of the country, satellite data shows.

Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva urged countries to "work towards an economy less dependant on fossil fuels" during the COP28 climate talks that ended on Wednesday with a deal to transition away from oil and natural gas. 

But hours after the deal was struck, his government put up for auction a record 603 gas and oil drilling concessions covering 2% of the country's area, according to an analysis by environmental nonprofit Arayara International Institute.