The ongoing Amazon fires brought unprecedented attention to the threats confronting the world’s largest tropical rainforest. But they also brought greater public awareness to EII’s focus on collaborative strategies that protect tropical forest regions and support the communities that depend on them.

As Executive Director Dan Nepstad wrote in a blog published soon after news of the fires emerged, “The current focus on Amazon fire … opens an opportunity” to put in place “long term, systemic solutions” to these challenges. Dan has done research and policy work on Amazon fire and how to solve it for 25 years. His blog (available in Portuguese and Spanish), as well as TV, radio and newspaper interviews given by him and other EII staff members helped correct important misconceptions and highlight potential solutions.

Below are a few of the highlights:

• Torching Farmers and Ranchers Won’t Stop Fires in the Amazon(Bloomberg, Aug. 24, 2019)
• How the Fires in the Amazon Rainforest Will Impact the Global Ecosystem (National Public Radio, Aug. 27, 2019)
• What Would the Earth Be Like Without the Amazon Rainforest (USA Today, Aug. 28, 2019)
• It’s Really Close: How the Amazon Rainforest Could Self Destruct (New York Times, Aug. 30, 2019)
• Who Owns the Amazon (BBC World Service, Aug. 30, 2019)
• New California Effect Could Save Rainforest (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 1, 2019)
• The Myths and the Truth About the Fires in the Amazon (CNN, Sept. 5, 2019)
• Amazon Rainforest Fires Take Center Stage at House Hearing (Courthouse News Service, Sept. 10, 2019)
• The World is Watching as California Weights Controversial Plan to Save Tropical Forests (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 2019)

Other hallmarks include op-ed placements by EII Chief Economist Jonah Busch in CalMatters and Dan Nepstad in the San Francisco Chronicle, an open letter in support of California’s Tropical Forest Standard signed by 118 leading climate scientists and op-ed by EII Deputy Director Toby McGrath in São Paulo’s largest daily, Folha De São Paulo, on work supporting aquaculture and managed fisheries in the Amazon.