Andre Cabette Fabio

At the mouth of the Amazon River, Brazil's most promising oil frontier is at the centre of a dispute between environmentalists and South America's largest company.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is pressuring the government's environment agency Ibama to drop its objections to allowing state-controlled oil energy Petrobras to drill for oil in the Equatorial Margin region, off the northeast coast.

The deep timbre of bamboo flutes emerges from within a darkened Indigenous communal house in the Amazon rainforest, followed by dancers in body paint and musicians rhythmically stomping their feet under the scorching afternoon sun.

Variations of this scene have played out for generations in the Kalapalo people's Tanguro village in Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Park.

Born to a family of rubber tappers from Brazil's Amazon rainforest, Marina Silva had her first paid job as a maid, learned to read at 16 and became an environmental activist by 17 alongside the famous campaigner Chico Mendes.

Now Brazil's environment minister, next month she will host world leaders in the Amazonian city of Belem for the U.N. COP30 summit to discuss how to save the rainforest, and the planet, from climate change and the destruction of nature.

At this year's COP30 climate summit in Brazil, much of the debate is expected to centre on how to protect tropical rainforests, especially the Amazon - home to the meeting's host city of Belém.

The largest tropical rainforest on Earth faces a pivotal moment. Last year, a drought drove river levels to record lows and fires that contributed to the record loss of tropical forests worldwide, according to research organisation World Resources Institute.

As global temperatures smashed records last year, wildfires raged in South America, driving record global tropical forest loss, according to more than 20 years of data from the environmental NGO World Resources Institute.

The unprecedented damage complicates the target to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, agreed upon by more than 140 countries at the COP26 U.N. climate change conference in 2021.

Ahead of the COP30 climate summit in the Amazon city of Belém, Brazil is pushing ahead with road, railway, mining and oil drilling projects that risk accelerating the destruction of the vast rainforest, environmentalists warn.

In August, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed into law a bill that creates a fast-track special licensing process for projects deemed "strategic," a change hailed by agribusinesses and mining lobbies.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signed into law a bill easing environmental licensing rules for projects that could accelerate deforestation in the world's largest tropical rainforest.

Dubbed the "devastation bill" by critics, the law dismantles environmental protections that have forestalled developing ecologically sensitive areas and required companies to avoid or compensate for projects' impact on nature.

As Brazil prepares to host the COP30 climate summit in the Amazon, rampant deforestation, record wildfires and heat are posing unprecedented challenges to the world's largest tropical rainforest - making for a perfect storm at November's summit.

Context spoke to Carlos Nobre, a prominent Brazilian climate scientist, about the dangers now facing the rainforest and the signs of a tipping point from which there is no way back.

As global temperatures smashed records last year, wildfires broke new ground in the Amazon, impacting more than 6.7 million hectares in Brazil, where most of the vast rainforest is located.

That is more than double the previous record, and the highest figure that mapping consortium MapBiomas has registered in its data series dating back to 1985.

From the riverside settlement of Puranga Conquista in the Amazon rainforest, Elisângela Borges ships lotions, soaps, shampoos and oils from her own line of products to faraway cities in Brazil, India and the United States.

Speaking on her porch by the Negro River, Borges said her company, Yara Amazonas, started a partnership with loggers to extract oils and seeds from the forest, instead of cutting trees down.