Latest news with #Amazônia
Newsweek
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Bearing Witness in Black and White—Sebastião Salgado's Photos Against Environmental and Human Injustice
Brazil is a beast soaked in the sins of environmental destruction and human rights violations. This reality is captured perfectly in the late award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's haunting black-and-white photographs of faceless gold miners, their clothes torn, climbing makeshift ladders in the depths of the Brazilian Amazon. The iconic image, taken in 1986 at Serra Pelada, one of the world's largest open-pit gold mines that operated from 1980 to 1992, immortalizes both the desperation of men driven by poverty and the staggering environmental cost of their pursuit. The New York Times named it one of "The 25 Photos that Defined the Modern Age." The facelessness of the miners acts as a visual metaphor for how dehumanizing conditions erase individuality, as part of the process of othering. In a different image, Salgado presents a tense standoff between a miner and a police officer; here, their faces are visible, as are those of the men surrounding them, a powerful tableau of oppression and resistance. The bleakness of this reality is not confined to the past; it persists in our present. The late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado poses for a portrait at Somerset House, in London, on April 18, 2024. The late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado poses for a portrait at Somerset House, in London, on April 18, 2024. BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images Salgado was a legendary photographer. His lens bore witness to humanity's darkest injustices and most profound resilience. Salgado's work denounced human rights abuses, environmental devastation, social inequality, and the ruthless greed of industry, forcing mainstream attention on issues too often ignored or sanitized. In his final book, Amazônia, Salgado with his signature style, captured the lives of Indigenous communities, their sustainable traditions, and the lush river landscapes of the Amazon Rainforest. These photos show a world relatively untouched by modern civilization. His work presents a vivid record of what is at stake and a striking contrast to his earlier images of exploitation and ruin. Amazônia stands as a testament to the true Guardians of the Earth. Visitors attend the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. Visitors attend the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. DIEGO NIGRO/AFP via Getty Images Salgado's work cuts deeper than glossy PR images from corporations touting "social responsibility," or celebrities in face paint posing with Indigenous children for a photo-op in countries they cannot name. His images matter more than the hollow speeches delivered by politicians at international summits, few of whom ever face real risk or meet with Indigenous communities. Salgado himself paid a personal price for chronicling humanity's pain; he admitted last year that his time in hazardous environments had taken a toll. Salgado developed severe leukemia, which came from malaria he contracted in Indonesia in 2010. Another iconic Salgado photograph, this time from Kuwait: A Desert on Fire, shows a man silhouetted against a raging inferno. The fire was one of the hundreds of oil wells set ablaze by dictator Saddam Hussein's retreating forces in 1991. The series documents the displacement of families, efforts to contain the disaster, the toil of workers, and the lasting environmental scars. The images speak to the devastation wrought by oil addiction and war, echoing in the present as populist leaders like Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro threatens new conflicts over natural resources, eyeing Guyana's Essequibo region with predatory intent. Maduro's antagonist, President Donald Trump, isn't inclined to environmental policies. He left the Paris climate agreement and dismantled the measures taken by his predecessor, Joe Biden; still he keeps his word by not pretending to go green. Meanwhile, Brazil's President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva speaks often of the climate crisis but still invests in oil instead of properly championing green alternatives. A visitor attends the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. A visitor attends the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. DIEGO NIGRO/AFP via Getty Images Brazil has made progress in environmental and Indigenous rights since the dark days of Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, but the bar was painfully low. The Yanomami people continue to endure a humanitarian disaster plagued by diseases like malaria and diarrhea, while their land isn't completely free from illegal mining. Nevertheless, Brazil prepares to host COP30 and dreams of global environmental leadership. Ironically, Lula's administration and the Brazilian Congress are advancing plans to drill for oil offshore from the Amazon. In 2024, global average temperatures exceeded the Paris climate agreement threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. While Lula and Maduro salivate over oil, the world edges ever closer to the apocalyptic vision in Salgado's photos of Kuwait. The urgency of Salgado's work is clearer now than ever. His images delivered a gut-punch that transcended headlines and front-page news, shaped global conversations, and proved that he was not merely a photojournalist, but an artist of conscience. By showcasing tragedy and injustice in the realm of art, Salgado's photographs entered mainstream culture, finding their way into galleries, media coverage, and the living rooms of ordinary people. For many, it was the first time the gravity of these distant crises became impossible to ignore. The mourning of Salgado's passing in Brazil and around the world is a testament to the power and necessity of his life's work. His legacy is to expose, provoke, and bear witness through art, to the realities of a troubled, yet beautiful, world. Gabriel Leão works as a journalist and is based in São Paulo, Brazil. He has written for outlets in Brazil, the U.K., Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. such as WIRED, Al Jazeera, Dazed, Vice, Dicebreaker, Scarleteen, Women's Media Center, Clash, Anime Herald, Anime Feminist, and Brazil's ESPN Magazine having started his career at Brazil's TV Cultura as an intern. Leão also holds a master's degree in communications and a post-grad degree in foreign relations. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Washington Post
12-06-2025
- Washington Post
Removal of hundreds of illegal cattle in the Amazon sparks protests and divides residents
BRASILIA, Brazil — The removal of hundreds of cattle raised illegally on public land designated for sustainable forest use in Brazil's Amazon has sparked protests and divided residents, with some seeking to preserve rubber-tapping and Brazil nut harvesting and others wanting to consolidate livestock farming. The removal operation started last week in one of the country's most renowned Amazon conservation units, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve , named for the famed rubber tapper and environmentalist killed in 1988. Federal agents working with police and military officials seized around 400 heads of cattle from two farmers who had failed to comply with judicial eviction orders. The raids are set to continue in the coming weeks.
Associated Press
12-06-2025
- Associated Press
Removal of hundreds of illegal cattle in the Amazon sparks protests and divides residents
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The removal of hundreds of cattle raised illegally on public land designated for sustainable forest use in Brazil's Amazon has sparked protests and divided residents, with some seeking to preserve rubber-tapping and Brazil nut harvesting and others wanting to consolidate livestock farming. The removal operation started last week in one of the country's most renowned Amazon conservation units, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, named for the famed rubber tapper and environmentalist killed in 1988. Federal agents working with police and military officials seized around 400 heads of cattle from two farmers who had failed to comply with judicial eviction orders. The raids are set to continue in the coming weeks. But dozens of residents of the reserve protested the action, seeking to create a blockade in the city of Xapuri to prevent the removal of the cattle. The first truckload, carrying 20 head of cattle, had to take an alternate route to avoid confrontation. The protest, which had the support of local politicians, held powerful symbolism because Xapuri is the city where Mendes was gunned down. It also represented a contrast to the 1980s, when rubber tappers fought against cattle ranchers. The cattle removal came in response to a 56% surge in deforestation during the first five months of 2025 compared to the same period last year. The cleared area is nearly five times the size of Central Park in New York City. The reserve holds about 140,000 heads of cattle. 'Monitoring has identified that the environmental crime stems mainly from large-scale cattle ranching, which is illegal as it violates the rules of the protected area,' said a statement from the federal agency Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, known as ICMBio. The Chico Mendes Reserve is one of several Amazon extractive reserves where forest communities can practice low-impact extractive activities with protections against land developers. Rules limit deforestation to small-scale cattle raising and agriculture, and land sales are forbidden. Still, the Chico Mendes Reserve is the most deforested federal conservation unit in Brazil. 'Working to find a solution' The current problems worsened in the four-year term of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that ran through 2022, when deforestation exploded in the reserve. Bolsonaro defanged environmental protection and said the Amazon had too many protected areas. Some residents of Chico Mendes began selling their land parcels illegally to farmers, who hoped they would eventually be legalized. The strong reaction against the operation led to the creation of a WhatsApp group with around 1,000 members in which some issued threats against Raimundo Mendes de Barros, cousin and political heir of Chico Mendes, who opposes cattle expansion. But historical organizations applauded the cattle removals, including the National Council of Extractivist Populations, which issued a note supporting the operation. Cleisson Monteiro, president of the Association of Residents and Producers of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Xapuri, backed the protests against the cattle removals. He said that while deforestation must be addressed, federal agents sparked anger and fear among families who don't comply with all the reserve's rules. The area where the raids began, known as Seringal Nova Esperanca, 'no longer has a rubber-tapper profile,' Monteiro said. 'The people who live there have a different way of life. They are farmers engaged in small-scale family agriculture, with some cattle ranching for beef and dairy.' Monteiro said that about 140 families live in Nova Esperanca, including his own, all of whom have different degrees of non-compliance with the reserve's rules. He said that, even though only two individuals were targeted, there is concern that the operation could affect other families. 'ICMBio shouldn't have acted at this moment, because we're working to find a solution,' he said. 'The forest can't compete' The reserve is home to around 4,000 families. About 900 families produce rubber for a French shoe company, Veja. The project has proven successful, but the demand is not high enough to absorb the reserve's full production potential. Jeffrey Hoelle, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the area for two decades, said that cattle farming has been more lucrative for residents than traditional means of harvesting rubber and nuts from the forest. 'Twenty years ago, rubber tappers were just starting to adopt cattle. And over the last couple of decades, it's become increasingly popular,' Hoelle said. 'It's just become more acceptable over time. But essentially, the forest can't compete in terms of economic value with cattle. The extent to which rubber and Brazil nuts can provide for people is really limited compared to cattle, for which, unfortunately, you have to cut down the forest and plant pasture.' ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Reuters
09-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Insight: Why Brazil's ‘King of Cattle' is embracing a plan to save the Amazon
XINGUARA, Brazil, June 9 - Decades of ranching in the Amazon have earned Roque Quagliato, Brazil's 'King of Cattle,' great wealth – and some trouble. His family's immense farms were accused of submitting workers to slavery-like conditions in the 1990s and deforesting huge tracts of the rainforest in the early 2000's. But as Brazil's beef industry evolves under pressure from some of the world's greatest export markets, Quagliato, at 85, is now in evidence for something else: he is the face of the push to fix cattle ranching in the Amazon, one of the world's biggest drivers of deforestation. Quagliato's cattle were the first to be tagged with chips in their ears as part of a government program to make millions of cattle in the Amazonian state of Para traceable around the time world leaders arrive there for the United Nations climate summit in November. 'What we hope is that, at the end, the international market gives Brazil a better price,' he said at the sidelines of a recent cattle auction in Xinguara, one of the beef capitals of Para. Deforesters, he added, are now 'a matter for jail.' Quagliato has his eyes on exporting pricier and more demanding markets in the United States, Europe and Asia, some of which buy from Brazilian states but not Para at least partly because of concerns around animal health and links to deforestation. "Brazil is hustling to open high-demand markets such as Japan and South Korea, and improving its traceability system is one of the key steps to reaching that goal," said Renan Araujo, a senior market analyst at S&P Global. Para, which has a herd of 26 million, about the size of Australia's, wants to tag all its cattle by 2027 as it seizes on the global spotlight to become a test for a wider policy and a major shift for the world's largest beef exporter. So far, it's off to an inauspicious start. The law, passed in late 2023, requires that ranchers in Para identify their cattle by the end of 2026. But by May ranchers in the state of Para had only tagged some 12,000 cattle. But the buy-in of big ranchers, like Quagliato, has allayed concerns that 'there was going to be wholesale rejection' of the policy, said Andy Jarvis, who directs the program Future of Food at the Bezos Earth Fund, which donated $16.3 million to Para's project. "The success of this initiative needs the farmers and ranchers themselves to be supporting it." The ambitious move, if successful, could be a turning point in the struggle to halt the destruction of the world's largest rainforest. Environmentalists have long argued that improvements in cattle traceability would give law enforcement a powerful tool to choke off ranching in illegally deforested farms from the global supply chains relying on Brazil to feed growing global appetite for beef. While the state's proposal to track cattle individually is no silver bullet against deforestation, it would be a step forward that many thought unimaginable not so long ago. Many ranchers are resisting the program, which they think will take some of them out of business, and few believe the government will meet its goals for this year. But several big-time farmers interviewed by Reuters are throwing weight behind the policy. "There is a cost," Quagliato said. But when ranchers sit down to talk about it, he added, they simply conclude that "we have to do it." The Quagliato family still faces questions over their own impact on the forest and its people. Brazil's federal environmental protection agency said Quagliato paid all his deforestation fines, except for one which he settled, agreeing to regenerate the forest. One of his family members was recently convicted of submitting workers to slave-like labor conditions, though he is appealing. Quagliato declined to comment on these cases. Tagging each cow in Para isn't simply a tool to guarantee animals aren't eating grass where forests were illegally razed. More than anything, it allows animal health agencies to quickly track any sick cattle and their contacts. Data suggests the market rewards traceable herds. The average price of the beef Brazil exports is 8% lower than Uruguay's, which traces cattle individually, according to 2024 data from the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association. That's partly because Uruguay sells much of its beef to the European Union, which has long worked to rid its supply chains of ties to deforestation and requires individual traceability at least 90 days before cattle are slaughtered. Most big ranchers interviewed by Reuters see cattle tagging as an unavoidable path forward, though some fear Para is moving too fast for farmers to adapt and would like the policy to be watered down. Quagliato declined to say how big his herd is or how many of his cattle he had tagged. Local publications have estimated his herd size to be around 150,000 cattle. Ranchers told Reuters they are waiting to comply until the legal deadline comes closer, because they want to make sure it won't be delayed as many observers expect. Some also complained about technical glitches in the system to register cattle, which the government denies. Still, the project has gained support from both the meat packing industry and environmental groups. São Paulo-based JBS, the world's biggest meat packer, has donated 300,000 tags to the program so far. "I'm optimistic," said Marina Guyot, a policy manager at Imaflora, a nonprofit that received a grant from Bezos to help implement the policy. "At the moment, we have political will, which is more than half the way there." Alaion Lacerda's 50-strong cattle herd at the heart of Para state munch on grass alongside cocoa growing beneath the shade of native trees he planted. He is one of thousands of small producers at the bottom of Brazil's supply chain, providing young calves that bigger ranchers will fatten and sell to slaughterhouses. But, like about half the cattle in Para, his herd is grazing in areas where the rainforest was illegally razed, and he now wonders if the new law will make it harder for him to sell his cattle. "It scares us," he said, sitting on his porch. "We live in a region where almost all producers have a liability." Every day satellites collect visual data on deforestation that the government and meat packers use to mark farms where forests were illegally razed. But tagging will allow officials to geo-locate cattle with a swiping device. The tool could make it harder for farmers to say cattle that were reared in illegally deforested areas came from legal farms, said Ricardo Negrini, a federal prosecutor who monitors links to deforestation in the beef supply. But the program, he added, "still falls short in terms of environmental standards," partly because the tags only geolocate animals at specific moments, allowing ample time for bad-faith producers to move cattle without being noticed. "Whatever you want to control, you can't catch everything," said Raul Protazio Romao, the head of Para's environmental department. "You have to progressively implement control mechanisms that constantly evolve and close gaps." Lincoln Bueno, a big rancher whose family also controls beef exporter Mercurio, said he is not yet tracing his cattle because he fears he may be punished for buying from small suppliers who have illegally deforested plots in their land. "I can only do what I am able to comply with," he said. Convincing ranchers like Bueno and Lacerda to tag their cattle is Para's biggest challenge. It's why the government now allows farmers who have illegally cleared forest on their ranches in the past to clear their records by committing to allowing the forest to grow back. On a recent morning, agricultural analysts from a nonprofit called Solidaridad, visited several small ranchers who they hoped would enter the program. Some were open to the idea that cleaning up their records would have benefits. Others, like Lacerda, were more skeptical. "For me to reforest, isolate the area so I can be legal, I'm going to have to reduce the number of animals," he said. But that, he added, "will affect my income."
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jean-Michel Jarre announces first European tour for nine years
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. French electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre has announced a series of summer concerts throughout Europe for June and July. This will be Jarre's first official tour since 2016 and his first live performance since he headlined the Paris 2024 Olympic Games closing ceremony last September. The shows will take place in some of Europe's most stunning settings - from ancient amphitheatres such as the Arena Pula in Croatia and Anfiteatro Degli Scavi in Pompeii to the iconic Piazza San Marco in Venice, along with royal palaces such as the Royal Palace of Brussels, state-of-the-art arenas and open-air festivals, and will feature highlights from Jarre's 50-year catalogue alongside newer compositions and reimagined classics. "I'm delighted to return to the stage and share this new live experience with fans across Europe," says Jarre. "Each venue on this tour offers a unique atmosphere and energy - they are all perfect settings to bring my music to life." Jarre recently attended the opening of Amazônia in Brussels, an exhibition by renowned French-Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, for which he composed the evocative original soundtrack. He is also presenting Oxyville at the official Venice Architecture Biennale, which takes place from May 10 to November 23, an electronic musical creation designed with 360° spatial sound, exploring the connection between 3D sound and architectural space. You can see all the European tour dates and ticket details below. Jun 13: NOR Oslo GrefsenkollenJun 15: FIN Helsinki Nordis (Helsinki City Festival)Jun 17: EST Tallin Unibet ArenaJun 20: POL Slupsk Bali Indah: Dolina Charlotty Jun 23: BUL: Sofia Kolodrum ArenaJun 26: HUN BUdapest Papp László SportarénaJun 28: CRO Pula Arena Pula Jul 1: BEL Brussels Royal Palace of BrusselsJul 3: ITA Venice Piazza San MarcoJul 5: ITA Pompeii Anfiteatro Degli Scavi Jul 8: SPA SevillePlaza de España (Iconica Festival) Jul 11: GER Suttgart Schlossplatz (Jazz Open Festival) Get tickets.
