Feature - Utopia and Eden in the Brazilian Amazon
Cristina de Middel
The deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has increased at an alarming speed since the country’s new far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took over office in early 2019. According to Brazilian satellite data, deforestation in the month of July soared more than 278% compared with the same month in 2018. Bolsonaro’s government has been criticized for rolling back environment protections and opening the Amazon to logging, mining, ranching and industrial-scale agriculture. In tandem, Brazil has seen an escalation of violence between the diverging interests of farmers, miners, lobbyists and...
