Amazon's rescue reversed

Space imaging gives the lie to Brazil's recent 'great achievement' of halting rainforest destruction

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Friday January 25, 2008
The Guardian

In a world of climate change and general environmental degradation, it was one ecological disaster that had apparently been averted.

After decades of steady obliteration, the tide appeared to have turned against the illegal deforestation that has disfigured the world's largest tropical rainforest. Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, went on the radio in August to trumpet the breakthrough. His environment minister, Marina Silva, hailed "a great achievement for Brazilian society".