Due to better weather conditions and increased preventive efforts by Brazil’s government, the 2025 Amazon fire season is currently milder than those experienced in recent years. But that doesn’t mean the Amazon is safe. Once the flames die down, the destruction continues. Quieter and slower, but just as deadly. Land grabbing, pasture expansion, and toxic smoke threaten both forests and frontline communities.

Because the Amazon isn’t just being burned. It’s being sold, cleared, fenced, and fed into the global industrial agriculture machine. And at the centre of that machine is Big Ag.

What happens after a fire? Pastures. Cattle. Cash.

In 2024, according to MapBiomas, the Amazon recorded its largest burned area in 40 years, with 15.6 million hectares affected, 117% above average. That figure shocked the world. However, even when fire activity slows, land-grabbing and deforestation persist, driven by farms that feed into an industrial system of meat. Pasture expansion for cattle remains the leading driver of deforestation in the Amazon. 

One of the industry’s biggest players, the meat giant JBS, has been repeatedly linked to deforestation across its massive supply chain. Investigations have found that JBS is connected to over 1.5 million hectares of deforestation in its indirect cattle supply chain. Furthermore, JBS admitted to purchasing 8,785 head of cattle from three ranches owned by Chaules Volban Pozzebon, following a complaint by Greenpeace Brasil, Repórter Brasil, and Unearthed. The rancher was arrested and initially sentenced to 99 years in prison for multiple crimes, including illegal logging, and is considered the country’s most prolific deforester. He was also convicted of using labour analogous to slavery on one of his properties. The purchases were registered as coming from another farm, also owned by Pozzebon, which had been cleared according to socio-environmental criteria. Meanwhile, analysis from Mapbiomas shows that in 2024, 55% of the burnings in the Amazon started in pasturelands, further evidence that fire is a tool, not an accident.

This is not restoration. It’s extraction.

Health impacts and human costs: IPLCs on the frontlines

What’s often left out of headlines is the devastating impact on human health and livelihoods, especially for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs).

In 2024, smoke from record wildfires blanketed cities across the Brazilian Amazon, turning the air toxic. In Porto Velho, the haze was so thick that schools were forced to close and flights were grounded. Local clinics were soon overwhelmed with patients struggling to breathe, reporting respiratory distress, migraines, and eye irritation, according to the Guardian. 

For IPLCs, these impacts stack onto existing crises: fragile health services, scarce clean water, and the destruction of forest medicines and crops. The haze is more than an inconvenience, it’s a public health emergency that strips people of their right to clean air and undermines entire ways of life.

Yet despite all this, IPLCs remain the backbone of forest defense, standing up to fires and deforestation with little outside support.

This isn’t post-crisis, it’s a slow-motion emergency

When the world’s attention moves on after a provoked fire season, extractive industries move in. The system is designed to appear “normal” while quietly consuming the forest hectare by hectare. Just because the sky is clear doesn’t mean the Amazon is safe. The destruction continues. The resistance grows!

And your voice is needed more than ever.

Have your say and help us spread the message!

This destruction doesn’t need flames to keep spreading. As global leaders prepare for COP30 happening in the heart of the forest in the Brazilian state of Belém in November 2025, the Amazon must be front and centre. Not just as a carbon sink, but as a living, breathing territory under assault.

Leaders attending COP30 need to commit to a five-year “Action Plan for Implementation” (API4Forests) – a concrete decision to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.

You can help pressure decision-makers by sending a message demanding:

• An end to land grabs and industrial meat expansion into ecosystems like the Amazon.
• Accountability for companies like JBS.
• Full protection for Indigenous rights and territories.
• Real funding for community-led solutions and forest defenders.

Send your message to world leaders before COP30. We will bring them to the world leaders and resist with those living with what comes after the fire.

Alessandro Saccoccio is the Respect the Amazon Project Lead at Greenpeace International.

From a scorched mountain range in Spain to a giant polar bear in South Korea, here are a selection of images from Greenpeace photographers around the world this week.

Spain – A 16-day heatwave has exacerbated the fires that have ravaged Spain, making this summer one of the worst on record.

This is the toll of the flames in recent weeks, which have destroyed almost 400,000 hectares. Greenpeace Spain, with the help of photographer Pedro Armestre, has documented the extent of the destruction in the Communities of Galicia and Castile and León from the air, even reaching areas that have not been previously documented.

Belgium – Amazonia travelling letters at Place du Luxembourg in front of the European Parliament in Brussels. Greenpeace bring the Amazon to the heart of Europe through a powerful street-level action: giant AMAZONIA letters touring major cities. Through emotional messages, video projections, and Indigenous voices, the action calls for urgent climate justice and forest protection ahead of the historic COP30 in Belém.

South Korea – Greenpeace Seoul hosted the second edition of the pop-up campaign ‘WEarth: The Voice of Earth’ at Hyundai Department Store in Bucheon. Unlike the first event in June, which took place in central Seoul, this popup targeted department store visitors and families, creating an approachable way for new audiences to connect with Greenpeace. Participants joined activities such as the ‘Yeolbat-gom’ (angry polar bear) photo zone, recording voices for the Earth, making eco-friendly moss planters with recycled coffee grounds, and a children’s climate talk by science communicator Dr. Jungmo Lee.

Philippines – Rep. Javi Benitez delivers a powerful speech in Congress, outlining the risks of climate change and the impacts on local communities of extreme weather events in the region, ahead of the re-filing of the Climate Accountability Bill.

South Africa – Greenpeace activists and communities living in some of South Africa’s most polluted regions staged a powerful peaceful protest outside the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) in Pretoria to denounce South Africa’s deadly air pollution crisis and demand urgent governmental action.

Greenpeace has been a pioneer of photo activism for more than 50 years, and remains committed to bearing witness and exposing environmental injustice through the images we capture.

To see more Greenpeace photos and videos, please visit our Media Library.

Every day, every hour, you click on news that is stressful, overwhelming, and disheartening. Even as one remains committed to witnessing what is happening the world over, it seems equally important to feel powerful and hopeful in the face of so much bad news.

That collective sense of doom can be verified with data when market research company IPSOS releases its What Worries the World survey, revealing where global anxieties lie. In the recent August 2025 survey report, the top five concerns across 30 countries were crime & violence, inflation, poverty and social inequality, unemployment, and corruption. 

These data points matter, of course. But perhaps the surveys we often don’t find are the ones asking the question “What Gives the World Hope?”. It’s a valid and crucial question. In times of such extremes, hope remains as one of the important possibilities for change, a declaration that all is not lost.

I, like many others I assert, derive hope from taking action and witnessing the action of others. Let me walk you through a few examples of how local communities are turning worry into hope in action.

Local-led solutions: building grounds for hope

When inflation squeezes budgets and the cost of living makes it hard to put food on the table, farmers’ cooperatives in Morocco and Egypt step in, empowered to produce food in their communities in sustainable, equitable, and inclusive ways.

As small-scale farmers worked together to form a regional social and cooperative economic entity,  they are upscaling a women-led chili-pepper production into a regional cooperation and movement that hoped to transform the policies in the countries they operate. 

In places where housing seems like a privilege rather than a basic need, housing cooperatives, such as Kampung Akuarium in North Jakarta, provide a solution.  The residents, who were once victims of forced eviction in 2016, rebuilt their lives and were allowed to return. The “kampung” (neighborhood) built “kampung susun” (stacked vertical kampung) an appropriate design that fits their needs and customs.

Aside from provisioning shelter needs, the neighbourhood cooperative ventured into small-scale businesses, such as catering, laundry, and renting out shops. These gave additional income that the neighbourhood was able to distribute to the community in support of other basic needs such as electricity, water, and building maintenance. The efficacy of the alternative system led to replication in several urban poor communities across Jakarta and even inspired Rujak Center for Urban Studies to apply it to its mid-rise housing in Jakarta.

When economic growth fails to provide basic services for the people, a traditional system of money management in Africa, known in many names such as “njangi”, “tontine”,  “stokvel”, “pari”, “sousou”, “ajoh”, and “family lottery”, serves as a safeguard. 

These community-based systems represent a vast informal economy. They support families through tough times, helping them to put children to school, and offering opportunities to improve people’s lives who are often excluded from formal systems offered by banks and the state.

These grassroots efforts are not just responses—they are vibrant embodiments of hope in action are reshaping the economy—tackling housing, food, and fairness head-on, while giving policymakers a blueprint for real change. 

Explore our map (full screen) to discover how local-led solutions are making a global impact. 

Your turn: What brings you hope?

We at Greenpeace, invite you to look around you, reflect and share with us: what brings you hope in the world right now? Is it a youth-led enterprise initiative? A collective transforming how cities and communities become more resilient to the climate crisis? Is it a labor union advocating for a fair share of profit and a just working environment? A solidarity economy model creating equitable opportunity?

We believe a thriving economy and a healthy planet can go hand in hand together. Now, we’d love to hear from you: what’s a win-win idea for the planet and the economy? Share your hopeful thoughts through the form below.

Rhea Jane Mallari is a Wellbeing Economy Project Lead at Greenpeace International

Every year on August 9, the world briefly turns its gaze toward Indigenous People. Our cultures are celebrated, our songs and painted faces put on display. And then, silence returns. Behind the cliche, our communities remain marginalised, dispossessed, and forgotten. This must end.

I am Valentin Engobo Mufia, a son of Lokolama, a land nestled deep within the equatorial forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I have witnessed my people treated as strangers on their own ancestral lands. Our ancestral knowledge is dismissed, mocked, or exploited. My tribe, the Tshwa, has lived in harmony with the forest for generations. We know its plants, its spirits, its secrets. And yet, in the minds of many decision-makers, we are still seen as “sub-citizens,” obstacles to development, shadows in the trees.

Indigenous communities challenging the status quo 

My grandfather was one of the first in our region to challenge this invisibility, refusing to accept the submissive role imposed by colonial powers and local elites. He opened a path. Today, I continue that fight. Not for myself, but so that my children and their children may one day walk in a living forest, with their heads held high.

Because it is not only our culture that is under threat. It is also your future. The peatlands we have protected for centuries are among the most vital carbon sinks on earth. They are a natural barrier against climate chaos. And yet, instead of listening to us, we are sidelined. We are denied land rights over territories we have safeguarded for generations. Destructive projects continue to be approved without our consent, sometimes even in our name, but without our presence.

I have taken this fight to the highest levels, even filing a complaint against the World Bank for harmful policies imposed on our lands. This is more than a political battle. It is a fight for survival, for dignity, for the right to exist without having our identity erased or hijacked by others.

Today, we no longer accept symbolic gestures or hollow promises. We demand:

• Clear, international legal recognition of our rights
• Direct and structured access to climate finance
• Training and education tailored to our context
• And most importantly, full inclusion in all development policies and decisions

Indigenous People’s role in climate talks

Indigenous People will no longer be reduced to decorative roles in climate talks or NGO reports. We are not props in the environmental movement – we are its frontline defenders. And we demand to be respected and treated as such.

Yes, I fear that some actors will continue to speak on our behalf, capturing funds meant for us without ever involving us. But I still believe in the prophecy that has long circulated among our people: “The people of the forest will reclaim their voice and light the way for others.”

Protecting the forest doesn’t mean locking it away. It means using it with reverence and responsibility. We have always done that. Now it’s time for public policies and international institutions to do the same. It’s time for leaders to support projects born within our communities, to truly protect our ancestral lands, and to regulate the ruthless exploitation of natural resources.

Because in the end, we are one with the forest. And as long as we stand, we will fight for it, for ourselves, for you, for the future.

Valentin Engobo Lufia is representative of the Tshwa Indigenous People of Lokolama, DRC.

Guest authors work with Greenpeace to share their personal experiences and perspectives and are responsible for their own content.

Take action now to protect the Congo Basin.

This story was originally published by Greenpeace Africa for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (9 August). More stories from the Congo Basin forest available on Greenpeace Africa’s ‘travel diary from the Congo Basin’ blog series.

From an air pollution protest in South Africa to a blockade in New Zealand, to a garbage mountain protest in Germany, here are a few of our favourite images from Greenpeace’s work around the world this week.

South Africa -Greenpeace activists and communities living in some of South Africa’s most polluted regions staged a powerful peaceful protest outside the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) in Pretoria to denounce South Africa’s deadly air pollution crisis and demand urgent governmental action.

Germany – Greenpeace activists stage an impressive image for more environmental protection. A kayak disguised as the Titanic heads straight for an iceberg of packaging waste around three meters high in the harbour basin of Muenster. The scene is accompanied by activists on stand-up paddleboards with banners. The action is part of a campaign for a municipal packaging tax and is intended to send a strong signal for more environmental and resource protection.

Germany – In front of the Ministry of Defence, Greenpeace Youth protests with a five-square-metre banner reading ‘We don’t want to march into our future’, together with the German Peace Society – United War Resisters (DFG-VK), against the foreseeable reintroduction of compulsory military service.

New Zealand – During the second day of the meeting of the Global Ocean Treaty Preparatory Commission, Greenpeace held an event at the United Nations Headquarters in partnership with activists, scientists and indigenous community members. Together, they made the case for large new protected areas of the high seas in the Atlantic and across the globe, which could help to reach the 30 by 30 target. The event, featuring panellists from Bermuda, Nigeria, and Canada, demanded integrity in recognising and empowering local and Indigenous rights, allowing for co-governance rooted in both scientific and traditional knowledge. This grounded, inclusive approach will ensure these Marine Protected Areas are both ecologically robust and socially just.

Sweden – “Amazonia” travelling letters projection show at Gustaf-Adolfs Square in Gothenburg.

Greenpeace brings the Amazon to the heart of Europe through a powerful street-level action: giant AMAZONIA letters touring major cities. Through emotional messages, video projections, and Indigenous voices, the action calls for urgent climate justice and forest protection — ahead of the historic COP30 in Belém.

Greenpeace has been a pioneer of photo activism for more than 50 years, and remains committed to bearing witness and exposing environmental injustice through the images we capture.

To see more Greenpeace photos and videos, please visit our Media Library.

Ever tried planning a trip across Europe and wondered: why are flights so cheap while trains cost a fortune? It’s not unusual to find a €15 flight and a €300 train ticket for the same day, same destination. How does that make any sense? If trains are the greener option, why are we basically being punished for choosing them?

The difference in prices isn’t a coincidence, it’s the result of a transport system that rewards pollution. We analysed 142 routes across 31 countries and the result shows that for a majority of cross-border trips, rail remains far more expensive than air. Here are 3 key reasons why: 

1. Aviation enjoys unfair tax privileges

You might have heard colourful slogans from low-cost airlines like “Nothing beats a cheap-flight holiday!” but the reality is the planet is paying the extra cost of cheap flight tickets. Polluting air travel is subsidised and it’s the biggest contributor to transport emissions. Aviation fuel remains untaxed across most of Europe. This mode of transport enjoys several financial benefits like:

• No tax on jet fuel (kerosene)
• No VAT on international flight tickets while trains in many countries must charge full VAT.
• Low airport fees and government subsidies, especially for budget airlines flying out of regional airports.
• Billions in public bailouts seen especially during COVID, when airlines across Europe were operating empty or near-empty flights in order to retain valuable take-off and landing slots at airports.

2. Green travel gets penalised

Train trips can cost up to 26 times more than flights, as the most extreme example found shows: Barcelona to London costs just €14.99 by plane, compared to €389 by train. The current system is making climate-friendly travel harder. Unlike aviation, rail operators are charged with:

• Energy taxes
• VAT in many countries
• High infrastructure fees
• Track access fees

The problems don’t stop at pricing, for people with reduced mobility, train travel can be even more inaccessible as rail networks are left with crumbling infrastructure and fewer connections because of underfunding and neglect.

3. Tax and climate injustice 

When you have to decide between a €15 flight and a €300 train ticket for the same day journey, it’s not a fair choice. What may seem like consumer freedom or cost preferences is a system of distorted prices, tax injustice, and political inaction. Most people are inclined to choose flights not because they want to, but because they’re being steered to that option by a system that has quietly made green travel the more expensive and inaccessible option.

What needs to change

As the world grapples with record wildfires, droughts and heatwaves, aligning transport pricing with climate objectives is essential. Governments need to stop rewarding pollution. We are calling for climate tickets, fair pricing and a tax on the super-rich to fund better rail services.

We need a transport system that puts people and the planet first. Train travel is the greener choice and it shouldn’t come with a higher price tag.

Tax the super-rich

Together, let’s urge governments to tax the super-rich and fund a green and fair future.

Add your name

Jackie Zamora is European social economic engagement lead for Greenpeace’s Fair Share campaign.

This August, as we highlight and celebrate Indigenous Peoples Month, we are fortunate to have three powerful messages of defiance and hope from the three great tropical forests of the world. These messages are profound in themselves, but altogether, they represent the growing transnational movement of Indigenous solidarity and leadership that can inspire and guide us all. This is a movement grounded in ancestral knowledge and shaped by a vision that extends far beyond the present moment. 

As pessimism dampens our collective sights, we can and must turn to such perspectives —  perspectives based in a longer history and the deepest values of kinship and community. As the illogic of capitalism and colonialism fails everyone but the elite, we must learn from Indigenous ways of seeing, being, knowing, and doing.  

West Papua

“If you ask me what my vision is for West Papua, in particular the land belonging to the Knasaimos Indigenous people, I will tell you that nature must be preserved for generations to come. That in hundreds of years hence, Indigenous people must still be able to enjoy our forests and rivers, and breathe fresh air, just as we can now.”

These are the words of Nabot Sreklefat, a leader and organizer among Indigenous youth in West Papua, home to the last tropical forests of Indonesia still standing. 

Sreklefat speaks passionately about how his people have stood up to illegal logging, transmigration, and palm oil expansion in the Knasaimos region. But the struggle has been years in the making and often boils down to the need to win recognition of their traditional rights and territory. 

Last year, “we received recognition of our customary territory from the Regent of South Sorong, after 17 years of fighting for recognition from both the regional and central governments. When we received the decree, we felt that the state had finally acknowledged us as an Iindigenous people. It was a truly remarkable event.” 

They now seek recognition from the central government. 

Sreklefat also speaks of learning from other Indigenous groups, including the recent inaugural World Congress of Indigenous People and Local Communities of Forest Basins. 

“When I returned to Knasaimos, I told our community that the struggle of Iindigenous peoples isn’t just in Papua, but throughout the world. So, don’t give up. If other places have already invested heavily and are being persuaded to accept it, that’s not the case. We must be strong in protecting our forests. From that meeting, I became even more convinced that the struggle of Indigenous peoples is crucial.”

Amazonia

“Politicians must respect the Constitution—it wasn’t written overnight. It came from our struggle. Now, they’re tearing it apart with laws that destroy our sacred land. They ignore Brazil’s future. I just want them to respect our constitutional rights. Simple as that.” 

These words belong to Dineva Maria Kayabi, a teacher, mother, and advocate for Indigenous peoples in the Amazon rainforest.

Kayabi describes her village on the banks of the Rio dos Peixes, where families grow their own food (bananas, yams, beans) in community gardens. Yet this idyllic home comes with a history of displacement and violence. Her community were forced to leave their homeland in Batelão to avoid being killed by cattle ranchers. Then her own mother was severely abused in Utiariti, a catechism center, before being forced to marry. 

From such deep suffering, Kayabi has forged a life of service and learning, earning a Master’s degree in Education to become a teacher and successfully bringing high school education to her territory. She now directs her efforts to coordinating with COIAB (Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon), the largest Indigenous organization in the Amazon, and traveling around the world to advocate for Indigenous peoples. 

Congo Basin

“My tribe, the Tshwa, has lived in harmony with the forest for generations. We know its plants, its spirits, its secrets. And yet, in the minds of many decision-makers, we are still seen as ‘sub-citizens,’ obstacles to development, shadows in the trees.” 

These words come from Valentin Engobo Mufia, a father and leader in his seventh decade of life. Hailing from Lokolama in the equatorial forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mufia speaks about the importance of protecting the forest. 

“The peatlands we have protected for centuries are among the most vital carbon sinks on Earth. They are a natural barrier against climate chaos. And yet, instead of listening to us, we are sidelined.”

Mufia says it’s long past the time for empty words and gestures. He shares his community’s demands:

• Clear, international legal recognition of our rights
• Direct and structured access to climate finance
• Training and education tailored to our context
• Full inclusion in all development policies and decisions

A Future Rooted in the Past

Each of the Indigenous Leaders speaks of their present struggles as well as their hope for the future. This is a hope rooted in prophecy, values, and ancient stories. Kayabi shares a particularly moving story: 

“This is what I learned from Ita Mait, my people’s shaman stone. Her home is at the top of the Salto Sagrado waterfall.  But one day, they stole her away. The white man who took her lost his hair, suffered pain, and died. She fell from the plane, crossed the sea, and my father-in-law, a shaman, sang every day: ‘She is coming back.’ Because, just like our culture, the stone finds its way back.”

Indigenous peoples have faced decades, if not centuries, of intersecting oppressions in every corner of the earth. Yet their resistance persists and is even growing. Through their messages, we can find hope in a wider vision and real solutions. 

Tsering Lama is a Storytelling Manager with Greenpeace International.