Andre Cabette Fabio

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.

Plans by Luis Inácio Lula da Silva to revive vast swaths of degraded pasture are key to his push to protect Brazil's Amazon without alienating farmers, but questions remain - including whether they will agree to stop clearing trees on their land.

During COP28 in Dubai, the leftist president detailed the proposals to ease pressure on Brazil's forests by regenerating up to 40 million hectares (99 million acres) of depleted grazing land - an area roughly the size of Sweden - within a decade.

From drug traffickers laundering money through dubious land purchases to miners illegally panning for gold, environmental crime is thriving in the Amazon and the question of what to do about it will be high on the agenda at the COP28 talks in Dubai.

For the first time, the global law enforcement community will gather at the U.N. climate conference, which starts on Thursday and runs until Dec. 12, to discuss how to combat the rise of illegal activities that threaten both people and planet.

A severe drought in Brazil's Amazon has damaged the forest ecosystem, brought chaos for riverside communities reliant on fishing and river transport, and fuelled wildfires that have cloaked the region's biggest city in smoke for weeks.

The Amazon basin accounts for a fifth of the freshwater flowing into the world's oceans, but many of the region's key rivers have been severely depleted by the dry spell - the fourth severe drought to hit the Amazon in less than 20 years.

For centuries, riverside communities, including the "quilombola" descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped from plantations and ranches, have shared Xingu Island in Brazil's Amazon Basin.

Its inhabitants live in brightly painted wooden houses overlooking rivers where small boats crisscross between islands and Abaetetuba city on the mainland to trade fish, seeds and fruits gathered from the Amazon forest in their backyard.

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.