Searching for hope

For most of our lives, the Amazon has played a crucial role in our understanding of how we’re looking after our planet. Its sheer size and heft helped it become the symbol of the existential threat we face from the rapacious over-exploitation of resources. The very idea that such a vast natural reservoir could be depleted, as we watch on in impotent horror, summed up our urgent need for global, collective action. If we could lose the Amazon, how far behind is the rest of the planet?

Hopes were high as the rate of deforestation started to dip at the turn of the century. But the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil five years ago quickly dashed such optimism. This month, Mark Rowe looks at the challenges Luis Inácio Lula da Silva faces on his return to power to mitigate the destruction of recent years ( see Page 28). We all watch anxiously to see how the older, hopefully wiser Lula fares. Hope, sadly, is in shorter supply for the Rohingya people trapped in a vast complex of refugee camps in Bangladesh after fleeing genocide in their home across the Naf River in Myanmar. Writer and photographer Gabriele Cecconi first visited the camps in 2018 to document the dramatic and brutal exodus. He returned last year to see how nearly a million people have fared in the interim ( see Page 44). While there have been some essential improvements in their condition, the grim truth is that the world’s largest refugee site is turning into a camp of despair. To compound their plight, in March this year, the United Nations cut the ration allowance it gives the camp inhabitants by US$2 per person due to a US$125 million shortfall in its aid budget!