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Graphic Truth: The Disappearing Amazon

August 23, 2019

Gabriella Turrisi

and

GZERO Staff

and

Ari Winkleman

Over the past fifty years, the Amazon rainforest has shrunk by an area equal to the size of Turkey. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Brazilian government supported settlement of the sparsely populated region for security reasons. Since then, huge swaths of the forest -- which is crucial for limiting the world's greenhouse gasses -- have been cleared for farmland used to feed Brazil's population and support its massive agricultural exports. Greater awareness of the environmental impacts in the 1990s produced tighter conservation regulations, though plenty of illegal clearing continues. In recent years, the annual deforestation rate has begun to rise again, and Brazil's new president Jair Bolsonaro has pledged to weaken regulations further in order to support businesses.

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Hard Numbers: Judge orders temp shutdown of Alligator Alcatraz, Colombian violence spreading, Women’s Rugby World Cup begins, & More

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President Donald Trump meets with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron.

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Members of the Hargeisa Basketball Girls team wrapped in the Somaliland flags walk on Road Number One during the Independence Day Eve celebrations in Hargeisa, Somaliland, on May 17, 2024.

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Last week, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) became the latest American conservative to voice support for Somaliland, as he publicly urged the Trump administration to recognize it as a country. Doing so would come with benefits and risks.

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Graphic Truth: The Disappearing Amazon

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Graphic Truth: The Disappearing Amazon

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David Miliband, IRC president & CEO, joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to discuss the worsening humanitarian crisis as the number of refugees and forcibly displaced people reaches record highs amid shrinking aid budgets and a pullback of US foreign aid.

A record 123 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide, straining poorer countries and an unraveling aid system. Ian Bremmer breaks down the refugee crisis and the growing threat to global stability.

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Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.

614: For all the US efforts to end it, the Russia-Ukraine war is showing no signs of slowing down, as Moscow fired 614 drones and other missiles at its neighbor.

Last week, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) became the latest American conservative to voice support for Somaliland, as he publicly urged the Trump administration to recognize it as a country. Doing so would come with benefits and risks.

After years of careful planning, negotiations in Geneva over the first-ever global plastics treaty ended in deadlock, says Eurasia Group's sustainability expert Franck Gbaguidi. Here's why the world is stuck in a plastic waste trap.