The Defense of Life within the Forest
English + Português
“The most important thing is audacity,” the Amazonian environmental activist Maria said to me. “If you have the courage to fight, then fight,” her husband, Zé Claudio, emphasized…
Theme: Science and the Environment
Amazônia Redux
A meeting with a group of indigenous leaders, during my recent trip to the Amazon, still resonates with me to this day. I met with them in Atalaia do Norte—the riverside entrance to the Javari reserve, a region in the Javari river basin. They wanted to share concerns about…
Read More
The Paradox of Chocolate Agrobiodiversity
The agrobiodiversity of cacao has become increasingly appreciated at the same time it is most endangered. Smallholder farmers and indigenous growers of cultivated cacao and their landscapes containing wild cacao are particularly caught in these contradictory trends…
Read More
Saving Latin America’s Forests
Surging deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon grabbed international headlines in 2019. In early August, The Economist decried environmental destruction in the world’s most extensive rainforest as “vandalism.” Three weeks later, French President Emmanuel Macron…
Read More
Myth and Metaphor
The full measure of a culture embraces both the actions of a people and the quality of their aspirations, the nature of the metaphors that propel their lives. A child raised to believe that a mountain is the abode of a protective deity will be a profoundly different human being…
Read More