糖心传媒

In a room at the back of her house, Vera Alves da Silva Oliveira keeps the air-conditioning on day and night to protect bags of seeds gathered by hand from Brazil's Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah.

Oliveira is one of more than 700 seed gatherers in the working to help recover forests and savannas across Mato Grosso, a major agricultural state.

With the capture of President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces, millions of Venezuelan migrants who fled economic and political turmoil are wondering what the future will bring.

From the streets of Miami in the United States to Bolivar Square in Colombia's capital, Venezuelans celebrated, chanting "freedom" over the ouster of the leader who oversaw one of the world's largest migration exoduses in recent history.

As high temperatures and forest degradation fuel record-breaking wildfires, dozens of governments and organisations meeting at the COP30 climate summit have pledged to boost prevention efforts and funding to fight the stronger, more frequent blazes.

Government environment and forest agencies from Ecuador, Peru, Ghana and Kenya along with nearly three dozen environmental and Indigenous groups worldwide signed an agreement to secure $100 million in funding by 2030 to strengthen wildfire prevention and response.

With world leaders gathered in Brazil for the COP30 climate summit, the nation's farmers are taking the opportunity to make their case that they are not to blame for the much criticised deforestation that threatens the Amazon rainforest.

Hosting news conferences before a global audience, the contingent of soybean, grain and cattle farmers rails at trade barriers set up by the European Union to protect the Amazon and other vulnerable lands.

A dozen countries have pledged to formally recognise land rights across 80 million hectares where Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other communities live in tropical forests around the world by 2030 in a bid to stem global deforestation.

The Intergovernmental Land Tenure Pledge, billed as the first global commitment recognising land tenure to secure additional land under Indigenous communities' control, was announced on Friday ahead of the U.N. COP30 climate summit that kicked off Monday.

As Brazil hosts COP30, the climate commitments of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will come under scrutiny, as he has sought to position the country as an environmental champion yet is advancing development projects in the Amazon rainforest.

World leaders, with the glaring exception of U.S. President Donald Trump, are set to gather in Brazil's Amazon rainforest city of Belém for the U.N. COP30 climate summit from November 10-21.

Under Brazil's Amazon rainforest canopy, hundreds of transparent plastic panels hang between tree trunks to starve a hectare of land of half the water it normally receives.

Scientists are creating this artificial drought in Querencia municipality close to the southeastern edge of the world's largest rainforest to better understand the limits of the Amazon's resistance to extreme dry conditions that are predicted by climate change models.

The deep timbre of bamboo flutes emerges from within a darkened Indigenous communal house in the Amazon rainforest, followed by dancers in body paint and musicians rhythmically stomping their feet under the scorching afternoon sun.

Variations of this scene have played out for generations in the Kalapalo people's Tanguro village in Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Park.

Born to a family of rubber tappers from Brazil's Amazon rainforest, Marina Silva had her first paid job as a maid, learned to read at 16 and became an environmental activist by 17 alongside the famous campaigner Chico Mendes.

Now Brazil's environment minister, next month she will host world leaders in the Amazonian city of Belem for the U.N. COP30 summit to discuss how to save the rainforest, and the planet, from climate change and the destruction of nature.

At this year's COP30 climate summit in Brazil, much of the debate is expected to centre on how to protect tropical rainforests, especially the Amazon - home to the meeting's host city of Belém.

The largest tropical rainforest on Earth faces a pivotal moment. Last year, a drought drove river levels to record lows and fires that contributed to the record loss of tropical forests worldwide, according to research organisation World Resources Institute.