Fonds W. Eugene Smith : Bourse W. Eugene Smith en Photographie Humaniste : Lalo de Almeida

Jasson Oliveira do Nascimento, a resident of the Arapixi Extractive Reserve in the Amazonas state, Brazil, cuts vegetation to make way for a canoe leading to the Antimary Extractive Settlement Project where they collect Brazil nuts, Boca do Acre, Brazil, 31 March 2020. The presence of land grabbers poses a danger for deforestation and threatens this traditional population. © Lalo de Almeida

A deforested area in Apuí, a municipality located along the Trans-Amazonian highway in the south of the Amazonas state, on 24 August 2020. Apuí is on the front line of agricultural expansion in the Amazon, occupying the seventh position of more deforested municipalities in 2019. According toMapBiomas, a non-governmental initiative that monitors land use in the country, 23,186 hectares of forest disappeared between January and August 2020 alone, 5.1% more than last year. © Lalo de Almeida

Peixoto de Azevedo, Brazil. 12/09/2019. Men work in a gold mining in Peixoto de Azevedo in northern Mato Grosso, which is one of the largest gold producing areas in Brazil. Part of the extraction activity is illegal and even those legalized do not comply with environmental legislation because there is no enforcement by the Brazilian authorities. The result is polluted rivers and degraded regions that look more like the lunar soil than a territory that was once covered by the Amazon rainforest. © Lalo de Almeida

Altamira, Brazil. 24/08/2019. Xikrin warriors arrive at Rapko village after jungle expedition to remove invaders from the Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Land, in Pará state, which had part of their area invaded and cleared by land grabbers. Abandoned by the government agencies, indigenous people organized themselves to defend their territory and fight against deforestation. © Lalo de Almeida

A man walks into the Yawalapiti Village amidst the smoke that has covered Xingu Indigenous Park due to forest fires. In addition to the impact of the accumulation of greenhouse gases, a global phenomenon, deforestation in the park boundaries has caused an increase in local temperature and changes in the hydrological regimes. Climate change, increasingly dry, has made subsistence crops problematic, changing the livelihood of these communities, which are increasingly dependent on industrialized food. Canarana, Brazil, 13 August 2016. © Lalo de Almeida

A party of the workers of the Belo Monte dam in Altamira, Brazil, on 1 September 2013. The construction of the Belo Monte dam created one of the largest migration waves in Brazil in recent years. Thousands headed to Altamira in the heart of the Amazon. At the peak of the plant construction in late 2014 and early 2015, the sites housed more than 25,000 construction workers. 70% were from other parts of the country, and 87% of them were men. © Lalo de Almeida

Altamira, Brazil. 03/09/2013. Aerial view of the levee that partially blocked the Xingu River for the construction of the Belo Monte dam. More than 80 % of the water in the Xingu has been diverted from its natural course, making it one of the largest man-made interventions, comparable to what was done to build the Panama Canal. Since 2015, about 140 km of the Xingu river, a stretch known as Volta Grande ( Big Bend ), with many rapids, channels and rock outcrops is being subjected to a drastic reduction of water flow. This is something that will have incalculable impacts on both the aquatic fauna and the way of life of traditional populations, that depend on the river for their food and transportation. © Lalo de Almeida

A boy plays with his dog in the Paratizão community, on the banks of the Xingu River, near the Belo Monte dam, on 26 August 2018. Tooth-like patches of dead trees surround the place after the flooding of the reservoir, an area of nearly 516 kilometres squared. The rotting vegetation releases methane gas and is more harmful to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide. © Lalo de Almeida

São Felix do Xingu, Brazil. 24/08/2019. A Xikrin indigenous woman uses the only public telephone in the village Rapko in the Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Land, in São Felix do Xingu, which had part of their area invaded and cleared by land grabbers. President Bolsonaro's speeches denigrating indigenous populations acted as a stimulus for the invaders of indigenous lands. Last year, Trincheira Bacajá lost 3,969 hectares of forest, the highest rate of deforestation since homologation, according to Sirad X monitoring. © Lalo de Almeida

Humaitá, Brazil. 21/09/2016. Pirahã girls watch drivers passing by the Trans-Amazonian highway hoping to receive donations of snacks and sodas, next to their camp on the banks of the Maici river, in the Amazonas state. This mysterious indigenous tribe keep some of the same habits reported on the first time they met the white men, centuries ago, and refuse to learn Portuguese. The Amazon stretch of the highway (2,250 km, 10% paved) between the cities of Lábrea and Marabá pictures the current Amazonian situation. The landscape consists largely of underused pastoral land, interspersed by protected areas and indigenous reserves which are under threat from loggers and miners. Burning of vegetation continues in the dry season and it is rare to glimpse any wild animals except for vultures. © Lalo de Almeida

Manicoré, Brazil. 10/08/2018. A stretch of the BR-319 highway that connects Manaus to Porto Velho, near the city of Manicoré, in the state of Amazonas. The paving of this 870 km road, which was one of President Jair Bolsonaro's promises during the presidential campaign, could have enormous impacts for this region, which is one of the most preserved areas of the Amazon rainforest. " BR-319 is an enormous threat to the forest because it opens up the half that is left of the Brazilian Amazon to the entrance of deforesters," says U.S. ecologist Philip Fearnside of Inpa (National Institute of Amazonian Research) © Lalo de Almeida

Altamira, Brazil. 02/09/2013Stray dogs stare at a butcher’s in the almost abandoned Vila da Ressaca, an area previously mined by gold seekers and soon to be explored exclusively by the Canadian mining company Belo Sun. The project, which is only a few kilometers from the Belo Monte dam, will be one of the world's largest open pit gold mines. This will bring new impacts to a region already so affected by the construction of the hydroelectric plant. Altamira, Brazil, 2 September 2013. © Lalo de Almeida