Debates over development in the world’s largest rainforest have led to deadly conflicts, threats to its indigenous people and harm to the global atmosphere.
Click here to subscribe to our newslettersAmazon Rainforest Defenders Confront Violence, Encroachment and Politics
In the 1980s, the assassination of the Brazilian environmental activist Chico Mendes fueled an international movement to save the rainforest from unchecked development.
“Chico’s assassination really brought about fundamental changes in the way people around the world thought about the process of deforestation,” Steve Schwartzman, the senior director of the Environmental Defense Fund, told Retro Report.
The cause eventually slowed deforestation and prompted the creation of over 200 land demarcations to protect indigenous peoples and others who depend on the rainforest for their livelihoods.
As new economic and political troubles shake Brazil, the rainforest may be approaching a tipping point. Last year, despite some protection from the demarcations, the rate of deforestation reached the highest level in 15 years, driven largely by cattle ranching.
Nonetheless, the fight to save the rainforest continues. Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised that his government is aiming for “zero deforestation” by 2030.
Educators, check out our Environmental Education Collection.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive resources related to this video.
Browse through dozens more lesson plans and videos here.
More Like This

A disastrous oil spill off the coast of Alaska and massive explosion of a rig in the Gulf of Mexico revealed a pattern of unsettled standards and inconsistent oversight that cast doubt on the oil industry’s preparedness for future accidents.

Catastrophic accidents at power plants have heightened fears about the safety of nuclear energy, but environmentalists and others are giving it renewed attention as a way to fight global warming.

In 1978, toxic chemicals leaking from an old landfill thrust an upstate New York community called “Love Canal” into the national headlines, and made it synonymous with “environmental disaster.”

NASA isn’t the first organization to experiment with living on Mars – in 1991 eight people sealed themselves inside a giant glass biosphere to practice space living. By the time they emerged two years later, they had “suffocated, starved and went mad.”