Five hundred years after Spanish conquistadors arrived, gold is still a driving economic force in South America's Guiana Shield. But the industry depends on another element, one with deadly side effects for miners and rainforests: mercury.
For centuries, the Quilombola people, descendants of escaped African slaves, have survived against insurmountable odds in the Amazon rainforest. Now industrial pollution and a pandemic are threatening their existence.
The state with the most forest cover in Brazil is home to a new arc of devastation, and two of the seven municipalities with the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon in 2020.
Mato Grosso is the epicenter of the pandemic in the Brazilian Amazon; in one community, 70 percent of the population has tested positive for COVID-19. Simultaneously, fires antagonize Indigenous lands.
Residents of the Middle Juruá Extractive Reserve worry that less rain could decimate livelihoods and leave them at risk of forest fires.
From the times of ancient Rome to the late 19th century, malaria was a deadly infection that no one knew how to cure, until chloroquine was discovered. Trump, Bolsonaro, and Maduro have defended its use against COVID-19, but scientific studies indicate that it is not effective.
On the banks of the Tapajós River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon, a development policy was implemented years ago to turn the region into an important world corridor for Brazilian soybeans. There lies American car mogul Henry Ford’s failed factory city.
A project called the "grain train," with its planned trajectory through the Brazilian Amazon, divides Indigenous groups and those who support rural development.
An ambitious infrastructure project in the Brazil is increasingly opposed the closer it gets to the heart of the Amazon—an area that has been defended by Indigenous communities for years.
The Brazilian city Sinop embodies the aspirations of a prosperous Amazonian agro-industry — especially now, with the prospect of a railroad that will help send exports to China.
Before it was outlawed, the Brazilian government federally isolated leprosy patients in remote colonies. Decades later, the children of these patients are calling for federal reparations.
The movement led by Chico Mendes in the 1980s has seen a resurgence in the face of government attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 has seized on the historical vulnerability of Quilombola populations on the lower Tocantins River in the Brazilian state of Pará.
A look at Amazonian fires and deforestation during the dry season and the possible consequences for the health of the Amazonian population over the COVID-19 pandemic.
The AP's global network reports on how the coronavirus outbreak is affecting the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
With journalists in Indonesia and Brazil, the stories in this project highlight how tropical forests in Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Amazonia might ameliorate—or, to the contrary, aggravate—climate change. The project also explores the current impacts of climate change on people and wildlife.
Sister Jean believes that God made us free. With that freedom, we made many terrible choices, like burning down the Amazon. Now, it is not God's job to save us -- that's up to people like Sister Jean.
How Flávio Dino's administration has violated the environmental rights of traditional communities in favor of commodity exploration and extraction with Chinese capital.
An expedition to Resex Guariba Roosevelt, in Mato Grosso, through the Brazilian Amazon wildness, to show life inside the most dangerous region of the Amazon.
The fires in the Brazilian Amazon became news everywhere in the last half of 2019. They alerted to the advance of an even bigger problem in the region—deforestation.
The aim of this project is to make a portrait of how life looks like in Amazonian traditional communities surrounded by soy fields.
Surrounded by the Amazon rainforest, some 400 families from the Middle Juruá Extractive Reserve transform the andiroba and murumuru that they collect from the forest into raw material for industry.
The stateless south of the Brazilian Amazon is the theatre for the explosive combination between unbridled land-grabbing and massive illegal logging.
As the world's largest consumer of soy, China's hunger drives Brazil's sales. How the Amazon fits into China's food security policy and Belt and Road Initiative—and what that means for the world.
What happens when the world’s most populous country has an appetite for beef and soy produced in Brazil? How China helps fuel the deforestation of the Amazon.
Jesse Hyde traveled to the Brazilian Amazon in June 2019 to report on the impact of cattle ranching on the rainforest and a series of violent conflicts over the forest's future.
Eliza Barclay explains how the Vox reporting team focuses on key superpowers of three tree species in three rainforests to convey their unique ecological roles and the urgency of protecting the them.
Environmental journalist Sam Eaton discusses his deep dive reporting trip along Brazil’s violent “arc of deforestation” to explore the crucial question: Can we save the Amazon, so it can help save us?
Meet Frederick Bernas and Rayan Hindi, who discuss the challenges of producing a documentary about a ballet program in Rio de Janeiro's Alemão favela.
Journalist Jill Langlois and photographer Lianne Milton, reporting on Alcaçuz Federal Penitentiary in Brazil, introduce us to two women whose husbands survived a massacre in the prison.
Journalist Rhitu Chatterjee discusses her reporting on the school meal programs in Brazil and India.
Pulitzer Center grantees Heather Pringle and Andrew Lawler traveled to the Amazon to report on isolated indigenous peoples' recent emergence from the forests.
Matthew Niederhauser introduces his Real World Cup project, produced in collaboration with The New Republic and Pulitzer Center.
Fred de Sam Lazaro explains the source of declining birth rate in Brazil and how it could enhance women’s role in the society—a topic of his project “Brazil: Girl Power.”
The project focuses on three climate superheroes under threat of deforestation.
2020 Elon University Reporting Fellow Anton Delgado is interviewed by Today at Elon about his Pulitzer Center-sponsored project, documenting the resurgence of leprosy in Brazil.
A project considered strategic by the Brazilian government underestimates socio-environmental impacts in one of the most threatened regions of the Amazon.
At a virtual Earth Day event for students, grantee Eliza Barclay speaks on a panel with youth activists, experts, and students about solutions-oriented climate change reporting.
In this webinar, grantee Pablo Albarenga shares stories of Indigenous youth working to protect their homelands in the Amazon rainforest as part of our series on stories of resilience.
The winners of the 67th Scripps Howard Awards represent among the best of journalism from 2019.
The Pulitzer Center-supported series on supertrees around the world was chosen as a finalist for the 2020 Ellie Award for Feature Design.
Bernas' lifelong connection to music and the arts drew him to the story of the favela ballerinas.
We have to decolonize ourselves: Eliane Brum, a Brazilian member of the Amazon Advisory Committee, addressing the first convening of the Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF).
Pulitzer Center founder and Executive Director Jon Sawyer reflects on the Rainforest Journalism Fund's first convening, which brought together 80 journalists who have reported from across the Amazon basin.
Grantee Frederick Bernas helped the subject of his Pulitzer Center-funded documentary raise money to build a dance school in a Brazilian favela.
Spearheaded by a coalition of Latin American journalists, the project helped shape the backdrop for a New Yorker piece on a court victory for an Ecuadorian indigenous group.
In this lesson, students will analyze how photojournalists tell under-reported stories using photography and apply tips for doing so themselves from Pulitzer Center-supported journalists.
Students explore reporting on Indigenous youth activism in the Amazon, analyze the causes of plastic pollution, and consider how they can make a difference in reducing waste in their own communities.
At the start of the school year, students might want to discuss global issues that arose over the summer. This lesson is intended to spark discussion on current events and ways to keep up with them.
This activity aims to help students make connections with their counterparts around the world by exploring what young people in different countries do in their free time.
This lesson explores how film is used to tell the stories of young ballerinas in Brazil’s favelas, resulting in art and/or research projects examining resilience.
Students evaluate two broadcast stories on the battle for land in the Brazilian Amazon in order to craft arguments about how they think land in the Amazon should be used.
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 Guernica with current day issues presented from The Pulitzer Center.
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 "Guernica" with current day issues presented by the Pulitzer Center.
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 Guernica with current day issues presented by the Pulitzer Center.
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