Andre Cabette Fabio

A few days ago, hundreds of Xokleng Indigenous people gathered around a screen in Ibirama-La Klãnõ territory in southern Brazil to watch the Supreme Court vote on Indigenous land rights.

The crowd erupted into cries and ritual dancing as the judges blocked, with nine votes to two, an attempt backed by the country's big agribusiness sector to stop Indigenous people from claiming land they did not physically occupy prior to 1988.

Indigenous leaders are holding out hope that a summit of Amazon country leaders held this week in the Brazilian city of Belém will give them more power over how the rainforest is managed, drawing on knowledge of protecting their lands for centuries.

A political declaration from the gathering said that the eight Amazon nations should act urgently to prevent the forest from reaching a tipping point, driven by land clearance, that would dry and degrade it further, intensifying global warming.

Plans for new railways, roads, dams and oil drilling in the Amazon are raising fears about further damage to the rainforest even as regional leaders hold a summit in Brazil seeking to end deforestation.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is hosting heads of other Amazon nations at two-day talks ending on Wednesday in the city of Belém to safeguard the forest, encourage sustainable use and stem biodiversity losses.

As leaders of Amazon nations meet in Brazil for a summit on protecting the rainforest, descendants of African slaves who escaped into the forest centuries ago are seeking land rights in an echo of the struggle by Indigenous peoples.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is meeting heads of other Amazon nations in the Brazilian city of Belém on Tuesday and Wednesday to better conserve the rainforest, promote its sustainable use, stem biodiversity loss and attract funding.

The Brazilian city of Belém will host a summit of Amazon Basin countries on Aug 8-9, where leaders will discuss how to better preserve the rainforest and promote its sustainable use, stem biodiversity loss and attract funding for conservation.

Analysts view regional action within and among the nine Amazon nations as vital to safeguarding the forest's natural functions, including curbing climate change, as local markets are a key destination for commodities linked to deforestation.

For two decades, Indigenous leader Nemo Guiquita has been battling in vain to get politicians to heed pleas to protect her Amazon rainforest home in Ecuador from illegal loggers, gold miners and oil companies.

Guiquita, 38, is hopeful that a summit of leaders of Amazon nations in Brazil on Aug. 8-9 will be her best chance yet to be heard, but says Indigenous peoples must be at the negotiating table for any regional pact to work.

In late May, Delta Air Lines became the target of a proposed class action lawsuit in the U.S. after advertising itself as "the world's first carbon-neutral airline".

Filed on behalf of a California-based client of the U.S. carrier, the complaint said the claim was "false and misleading" as it hinged on buying carbon offsets that are largely worthless - and led customers to believe the airline had not been responsible for releasing additional carbon into the atmosphere.

The area of land legally owned by and designated for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities has increased in dozens of countries in recent years - a trend that could help tackle deforestation and climate change, new research has found.

These groups gained legal recognition to more than 100 million hectares (about 247 million acres) of land across at least 39 nations between 2015 and 2020, according to a new report by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition.

Brazilian lawmakers - many connected to the nation's powerful agriculture lobby - this week approved bills that would weaken or reverse human rights and environmental policies established by the new government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Bill 490, which limits the recognition of new Indigenous territories, was endorsed by Brazil's lower house of Congress on Tuesday but it still requires approval by the Senate and Lula.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promised to halt deforestation in the Amazon as tree clearing threatens global climate stability and causes biodiversity loss in the rainforest.

But to succeed, experts say he will have to break a cycle of land grabbing that has led huge swaths of Brazil's Amazon to be cleared by cattle ranchers, speculators and others - often working in partnership with illegal loggers.