Category: Health

Monica Piccinini

6 July 2026

The Amazon has learned to distrust political promises. Every administration arrives with its own language of progress, development and national integration, but the forest measures governments differently. It remembers roads more vividly than speeches. It remembers the sound of chainsaws following freshly cut asphalt, the smoke rising from newly occupied land, the rivers clouded by mining, and the Indigenous territories transformed into frontiers of speculation.

In the Amazon, infrastructure has rarely remained confined to engineering. It has become the starting point for profound ecological, political and social change. That history explains why President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s announcement on 27 May that the BR-319 highway “will be built” echoed so powerfully across Brazil. He said:

It may be the most environmentally conscious road built in any country in the world. It will be a model road for quality and environmental preservation.

For many, it represented a long-awaited promise fulfilled, but for others, it marked the moment when one of the world’s most celebrated environmental commitments collided with one of its most controversial infrastructure projects.

The promises and the reality

Lula returned to office in January 2023 under extraordinary expectations. After years during which environmental protections had been weakened and deforestation reached alarming levels under Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, Lula pledged to restore Brazil’s environmental credibility.

During his inaugural speech at the National Congress on 1 January 2023, he promised zero deforestation in the Amazon, respect for Indigenous peoples, renewed climate leadership and an economic model capable of generating prosperity without destroying the rainforest. He said:

Our goal is to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon and zero greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity grid, in addition to encouraging the reuse of degraded pastures. Brazil does not need to deforest to maintain and expand its strategic agricultural frontier.

Indigenous peoples need to have their lands demarcated and free from the threats of illegal and predatory economic activities. They need to have their culture preserved, their dignity respected, and their sustainability guaranteed. They are not obstacles to development – ​​they are guardians of our rivers and forests, and a fundamental part of our greatness as a nation.

Internationally, the message was warmly received. Brazil appeared ready to reclaim its position as a global environmental leader. Scientists, Indigenous organisations and environmental groups cautiously welcomed what appeared to be a decisive break from recent years.

Three years later, the landscape looks far more complicated. While the federal government celebrates declining rates of illegal deforestation in some regions and has strengthened environmental enforcement across key areas, it’s simultaneously advancing the reconstruction of the BR-319 highway.

Lula insists the highway can become a global model of environmentally responsible infrastructure, protected by sophisticated monitoring systems, satellite surveillance and modern governance. But for many researchers who have spent decades studying Amazonian development, the central question remains painfully simple: can a road through one of the planet’s last great intact rainforests ever remain just a road?

The road into the unknown

Supporters of the BR-319 often describe the project in practical terms. Stretching approximately 885 kilometres between the capital of Amazonas, Manaus, and Porto Velho, it represents the only potential land connection linking Amazonas to the rest of Brazil. Residents speak of isolation, expensive food, unreliable transport and the difficulties of depending almost entirely on rivers whose navigability is becoming increasingly unpredictable as droughts intensify. Local businesses argue that logistics costs are among the highest in the country, discouraging investment and slowing economic growth. For many families living in Amazonas, the debate is about access to hospitals, schools, employment and basic services. Their frustrations are genuine and deserve recognition.

But the geography of the BR-319 transforms what might otherwise have been a conventional transport project into one of global environmental significance. Unlike highways built through already fragmented landscapes, the central section crosses one of the most well-preserved portions of the Amazon rainforest remaining anywhere on Earth. Its area of influence includes 42 conservation units, 69 Indigenous territories, 18,000 Indigenous peoples and some of the largest continuous blocks of tropical forest still functioning as a single ecological system. These forests regulate rainfall across South America, store immense quantities of carbon and shelter extraordinary biodiversity, much of which remains scientifically undocumented.

The concern expressed by scientists is therefore not limited to the strip of land occupied by the highway itself. Roads in the Amazon have repeatedly demonstrated that their greatest impacts occur far beyond the asphalt. They create access and access changes economic calculations. Land that was previously too remote to exploit suddenly becomes profitable. Illegal logging, mining, cattle ranching, oil and gas expansion and speculative land occupation rarely arrive years later. They often emerge almost immediately, advancing through networks of unofficial roads branching away from the main highway. Once these processes begin, they acquire a level of momentum that governments have historically struggled to contain. The experience of highways BR-163 and the Trans-Amazonian Highway demonstrates how promises of sustainable development were followed by accelerated forest loss and land-use change.

This is precisely why so many environmental researchers reject the idea that the BR-319 can be analysed simply as an engineering project. They see it instead as a catalyst capable of reshaping vast areas of the central Amazon, opening ecological frontiers that have remained comparatively intact for generations.

The science that refuses to disappear

Every generation of Amazonian infrastructure has been accompanied by promises that modern planning would avoid the mistakes of the past. The language changes, the technology improves and governments become increasingly confident that better governance can reconcile economic development with environmental protection. But the scientific evidence accumulated over decades paints a remarkably consistent picture. Roads rarely remain isolated transport corridors. They become vectors of occupation, facilitating processes that extend far beyond the original construction footprint.

Philip Fearnside, a senior researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), said:

Repaving the BR-319 highway would link the relatively undisturbed central Amazon to the AMACRO region – a deforestation hotspot named after the states of Amazonas, Acre, and Rondônia. Although AMACRO is promoted as a sustainable development zone (ZDS), it has become a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

Environmental studies prepared for the BR-319 itself acknowledge many of these risks. They identify the likelihood of accelerated deforestation, illegal settlements, biodiversity loss, land speculation, increased forest fires and growing pressure on Indigenous territories. Critics of the project argue that the problem isn’t a lack of scientific information but rather a failure to fully incorporate that knowledge into political decision-making. Many of the studies supporting the project were prepared years ago, before the rapid changes that have since transformed large parts of the surrounding region. Since then, deforestation has intensified, land grabbing has expanded and new economic interests have emerged, fundamentally altering the context in which those original assessments were written.

Perhaps the most revealing statistic is that deforestation around the BR-319 corridor increased by approximately 122 per cent between 2020 and 2022, even though paving had not resumed. The expectation that reconstruction would eventually move forward was enough to change behaviour on the ground. Land speculators, illegal occupiers and organised criminal networks rarely wait for governments to complete infrastructure. They position themselves in advance, anticipating economic opportunities that roads almost inevitably create. In that sense, political announcements become environmental events in their own right.

On 9 April, Senator for Amazonas, Eduardo Braga, said in one of his Instagram posts:

I support the use of drones to bolster surveillance along the borders and combat deforestation on the BR-319. Technology in service of the Amazon and our sovereignty.

Supporters frequently respond that today’s Brazil possesses technologies unavailable decades ago. Satellite monitoring, drones, artificial intelligence and integrated enforcement systems, they argue, will prevent the destructive dynamics observed elsewhere in the Amazon. But technology alone cannot replace institutions. A satellite can detect illegal deforestation, but it cannot remove land grabbers, prosecute organised crime, restore Indigenous territories or reverse the political pressures that often accompany frontier expansion. The challenge has never been about detecting environmental crime but about preventing it.

It’s also important to consider the challenges and potential problems of any type of monitoring. How would possible failures in the construction and maintenance of the highway be addressed regarding safety, technological or operational? Is there a risk that the monitoring would be irregular, inefficient, or even manipulated? How to guarantee transparency, continuity of operations and accountability in case of omissions or abuses? Who will bear the costs of monitoring and maintaining the highway? These questions go to the heart of whether the BR-19 can be governed at all.

The contradiction at the heart of Brazil’s climate ambitions

For President Lula, the BR-319 has become more than simply a highway. It has evolved into one of the defining contradictions of his third administration. Internationally, Brazil has worked hard to rebuild its environmental reputation, presenting itself once again as a country committed to climate leadership, rainforest protection and Indigenous rights. Those efforts have restored diplomatic credibility and reopened conversations that had stalled in previous years. But every declaration about protecting the Amazon now faces the same uncomfortable question: how can one of the world’s most ambitious environmental narratives coexist with a project that so many scientists describe as one of the greatest current threats to the integrity of the Amazon?

The answer offered by the government is that this time governance will prevail over history. Many scientists, however, offer a different response: history has an extraordinary habit of repeating itself because the forces unleashed by roads extend well beyond the intentions of those who build them. Once access exists, economic pressure multiplies, new industries emerge, land values increase and political influence shifts. Forests that once seemed permanently protected begin to experience the cumulative effects of hundreds of seemingly separate decisions, each rational in isolation, yet collectively capable of transforming entire landscapes.

The next pandemic may begin here

If the warnings surrounding the BR-319 stopped at deforestation, the debate would already be among the most consequential in modern Brazilian history. But scientists increasingly argue that focusing solely on the loss of trees obscures another danger unfolding beneath the forest canopy. Roads don’t simply fragment ecosystems; they dismantle natural barriers that have separated humans from wildlife for millennia. In doing so, they create conditions under in which entirely new public health crises can emerge.

That warning was delivered with unusual force in May by Professor Emeritus Renato Cordeiro of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), one of Brazil’s most respected public health institutions. Writing in The Conversation Brasil, Cordeiro argued that paving the 405-kilometre central section of the BR-319 could increase the likelihood of future zoonotic diseases emerging from the Amazon. His concern centred on viral spillover, the process through which pathogens circulating among wild animals cross into human populations. Scientific understanding of this phenomenon has advanced rapidly since the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving little doubt that deforestation, habitat fragmentation and expanding human occupation significantly increase opportunities for such transmission. Cordeiro wrote:

We cannot ignore this legacy of pain. After all, progress that silences science, ignores biology, and disregards humanism does not integrate territories; it only paves the way for the next predictable catastrophe.

The Amazon is home to an extraordinary diversity of viruses, fungi and bacteria, many of which remain completely unknown to science. While much international attention has focused on pathogens potentially released by melting Arctic permafrost, Cordeiro argues that tropical forests represent a far more immediate frontier of biological uncertainty. Every new road extending into intact rainforest increases contact between people, domestic animals and wildlife reservoirs carrying microorganisms that have evolved in relative isolation for thousands of years.

The consequences go beyond the emergence of entirely new diseases. Deforestation alters water systems, changes humidity, creates stagnant pools and disrupts ecological balances that naturally regulate insects carrying malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis and Oropouche fever. Public health, ecology and infrastructure are inseparable. Yet discussions surrounding the BR-319 continue to treat them largely as independent subjects.

For Indigenous peoples, the risks are amplified further. The highway’s area of influence includes 69 Indigenous territories and 18,000 Indigenous peoples whose immunological histories differ profoundly from those of Brazil’s urban population. Throughout Amazonian history, roads have repeatedly become corridors not only for economic expansion, but also for epidemics that devastated Indigenous societies long before environmental destruction itself became visible.

Joel Henrique Ellwanger, biologist and researcher at the department of genetics at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), said:

The preservation of the Amazon isn’t just about protecting nature – it’s about safeguarding our own health. Let’s commit to conserving this vital ecosystem to ensure that the threats of potential pathogens stay confined to the wild, far from endangering human lives. After all, the health of the Amazon means the health of us all.

The legal battle

While scientists warn about ecological thresholds, another struggle is unfolding far from the rainforest itself. Courtrooms across Brazil have become the latest battleground over the BR-319, where judges, prosecutors and environmental lawyers are increasingly being asked to determine whether political urgency has overtaken environmental law.

For nearly two decades, successive governments have announced plans to reconstruct the highway, only for legal challenges to repeatedly interrupt the process. Each administration has inherited the same dilemma: how to reconcile one of Brazil’s most ambitious infrastructure projects with legislation specifically designed to prevent irreversible environmental damage in the Amazon.

The dispute intensified after Jair Bolsonaro’s administration granted a Preliminary Licence in 2022. Environmental organisations immediately questioned both the scientific basis of the licence and the governance mechanisms proposed to manage the project’s indirect impacts. Their argument was never confined to the asphalt itself. Roads, they argued, cannot be assessed only by their physical footprint. Their real impacts emerge through secondary roads, illegal occupation, speculative land markets and expanding extractive industries that extend hundreds of kilometres beyond the official corridor.

In 2024, NGO Climate Observatory (Observatório do Clima) filed a Public Civil Action seeking to annul the licence, arguing that the environmental assessment failed to adequately address these cumulative risks. Central to the challenge was the absence of an effective environmental governance framework capable of controlling the explosion of deforestation that researchers believe would almost certainly accompany reconstruction.

Importantly, the organisation has repeatedly clarified that it’s not opposed to the BR-319 itself. Its position is that paving should proceed only after environmental licensing is completed, governance mechanisms are strengthened, land-use planning is implemented, and effective measures exist to contain illegal deforestation and land grabbing. In other words, the dispute isn’t about whether Amazonas deserves better infrastructure. It’s about whether Brazil possesses the institutional capacity to manage the consequences of opening one of the Amazon’s last great intact forest frontiers.

In a press release published by the Climate Observatory on 28 April, their public policy coordinator, Suely Araújo, said:

We are not against the road, we are against the deforestation it will cause if it is not carried out in accordance with the law. The government needs to find a balance between the construction and the protection of the forest, through a proper licensing process, which is not happening at the moment.

The licensing controversy

The legal confrontation escalated dramatically in April when the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT) launched four tenders covering approximately 339 kilometres of the highway’s middle section. Environmental organisations immediately returned to court, arguing that the government was attempting to advance construction by exploiting provisions contained within Brazil’s new general environmental licensing law (15.190/2025), the so-called “Devastation Bill”.

At the centre of the dispute lies a legal distinction carrying enormous practical consequences. Federal authorities classify reconstruction of the central section as an improvement or maintenance project. Under the new legislation, certain maintenance works may proceed through simplified licensing procedures or, in some circumstances, without licensing requirements that previously applied.

Critics reject that interpretation entirely. Approximately 405 kilometres remain unpaved, cutting through one of the most environmentally sensitive landscapes in South America. Describing the transformation of this section as routine maintenance, they argue, stretches legal definitions beyond recognition.

The resulting legal battle unfolded with extraordinary speed. A federal judge initially suspended the bidding process following legal action by the Climate Observatory. Hours later, the Federal Regional Court overturned the injunction. DNIT subsequently suspended parts of the bidding itself before later resuming it, creating a sequence of reversals that left even experienced legal observers struggling to determine the project’s actual status.

Behind these procedural disputes lies a much larger constitutional question. Can environmental licensing laws be interpreted in ways that effectively bypass the very safeguards they were designed to provide? The answer may shape not only the future of the BR-319, but also the legal framework governing infrastructure throughout the Brazilian Amazon.

Indigenous rights and Convention 169

Running through every legal challenge is another question that reaches far beyond environmental licensing. It concerns the rights of Indigenous peoples whose territories surround the BR-319 and whose futures may be permanently altered by decisions taken hundreds of kilometres away in Brasilia.

Brazil ratified Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) more than two decades ago. The treaty establishes a simple but fundamental principle: Indigenous peoples have the right to free, prior and informed consultation before projects capable of affecting their territories, cultures or livelihoods receive authorisation.

The Climate Observatory argues that these obligations haven’t been fulfilled. According to its legal action, meaningful consultation failed to occur before key administrative decisions were made. Federal prosecutors have raised remarkably similar concerns regarding a mining project in Autazes, where consultations with the Mura people allegedly took place only after crucial licences had already been issued.

For many Indigenous leaders, this pattern has become painfully familiar. Consultation increasingly risks becoming an administrative formality undertaken after political decisions have effectively already been made. But consultation was never intended as a bureaucratic exercise. It exists because roads, mines, fossil fuel and industrial projects can permanently destroy territories whose cultural, spiritual and ecological significance cannot be measured simply in economic indicators.

As pressure surrounding the BR-319 continues to intensify, the debate is becoming less about engineering than about governance itself. Whether Brazil chooses to honour its legal commitments to Indigenous peoples may ultimately become as important as any decision concerning the highway’s construction.

Extraction

By the time the debate reaches the BR-319 itself, the wider picture often disappears. The road is discussed as though it exists in isolation, as if it were simply an engineering project whose impacts begin and end with the movement of people and goods between Manaus and Porto Velho. Yet viewed alongside the growing number of industrial projects emerging across central Amazonas, a different picture begins to take shape. The highway increasingly resembles the backbone of a much larger transformation, one that reaches far beyond transport.

Across the region, mining companies, fossil fuel operators, logistics firms and agribusiness interests are positioning themselves for a new phase of expansion. Individually, each project has its own justification. Together, they reveal an unmistakable pattern. Infrastructure isn’t merely responding to economic development, it’s helping to make that development possible. Roads reduce costs, attract investment and fundamentally alter the commercial viability of territories that previously remained economically inaccessible.

Whether this represents long-overdue regional development or the beginning of a new extractive frontier depends largely on perspective. But it’s impossible to ignore how many of the largest industrial projects now planned for the central Amazon become significantly easier to develop once reliable year-round road access exists.

Mining and the Mura people

Few projects illustrate these competing visions more clearly than the proposed potash mine in Autazes. Promoted by the Canadian company Potássio do Brasil as a strategic response to Brazil’s dependence on imported fertiliser; the mine has received enthusiastic political support. President Lula has repeatedly argued that Brazil should reduce its dependence on imported potassium and develop domestic production, provided environmental safeguards are respected. During his Manaus visit last May, he said:

Brazil needs the potassium that we have, and we need to know how to exploit it without causing damage to the environment.

Federal prosecutors, however, paint a very different picture. Their legal filings argue that the licensing process contains serious irregularities, including territorial violations, inadequate consultation with Indigenous communities and threats to the rights of the Mura people, whose traditional territory lies only a short distance from the project. According to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, meetings with affected Indigenous communities occurred only after licences had already been granted, undermining the principle of free, prior and informed consent guaranteed under ILO Convention 169.

There were reports of fraud, co-opting by the company, threats, and even the offering of bribes (money) to some leaders of the Mura people to violate their own protocol, stated the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in 2024.

Court documents also describe allegations of pressure being exerted within villages to secure community agreement. Prosecutors argue that the project should have been licensed at the federal level through the environmental agency, Ibama, rather than by Amazonas state authorities because of its direct impacts on Indigenous lands.

A report by Folha de S.Paulo, later published by InfoAmazonia , revealed that Potássio do Brasil had offered an area of ​​5,000 hectares to the Mura people in exchange for their consent to the mining project. Adriano Espeschit, former president of Potássio do Brasil, said:

From the moment the mining stops, that land can become indigenous land; your right is acquired, there’s no problem at all, it’s just a postponement. It will continue to be possible after the company finishes.

Although the mining project and the BR-319 are legally distinct, they are geographically and economically interconnected. Reliable road access would transform logistics for transporting equipment, workers and future production. The highway therefore becomes much more than transport infrastructure; it becomes the enabling infrastructure upon which broader industrial expansion depends.

Petrobras returns to the Amazon

The mining industry isn’t alone in reassessing the economic geography of the region. Almost simultaneously with renewed political momentum behind the BR-319, Petrobras announced a major return to one of Brazil’s most significant onshore gas projects.

The state-owned company plans to invest approximately $495 million in revitalising production at the Urucu gas hub in the Solimões Basin. The programme includes new drilling, expanded production capacity and around 40 kilometres of new pipelines. Only a few years earlier, Petrobras had planned to leave several of these assets altogether as part of a broader divestment strategy. Those plans have now been abandoned.

Petrobras argues that the investment will strengthen national energy security and supports electricity generation across Amazonas. But for many climate scientists, the timing is striking. As Brazil presents itself internationally as leader in climate diplomacy, significant new investment is simultaneously flowing into fossil fuel production deep within one of the planet’s most important climate-regulating ecosystems.

The coincidence is difficult to ignore. One project improves regional access, and another dramatically expands industrial activity. Neither exists entirely independently of the other.

The Solimões Basin

Government energy planning documents have long identified the Solimões Basin, a pristine area larger than the state of California, as one of Brazil’s most promising hydrocarbon provinces. The resources themselves are not new. What changes over time is the infrastructure required to make their exploitation commercially attractive.

For years, researchers have highlighted the potential benefits that improved regional infrastructure could provide for oil and gas companies operating in the western Amazon. Among the most prominent examples has been the Russian state-owned energy giant Rosneft.

In 2015, Rosneft acquired exploration rights in several oil and gas blocks within the Solimões Basin, west of the BR-319 and near the Purus River. The company’s presence generated concern among scientists and Indigenous organisations which feared that expanded transportation infrastructure could facilitate future exploration activities.

Once the BR-319 is paved, several planned highways would also automatically go ahead, including the AM-366, which would run from the BR-319 to the municipality of Tapauá, crossing the Purus River and connecting areas associated with fossil fuel exploration in the Solimões Sedimentary Basin. Fearnside said:

AM-366, classified as a state road, offers a relatively simpler licensing process. Plans in the area around this road include the oil and gas drilling blocks granted to the Russian oil company Rosneft in the planned “Solimões Sedimentary Area” project. AM-366 would also give access to a large area of “undesignated public land”, which is the most attractive for land grabbers, squatters, loggers and others. This situation could result in extensive deforestation, posing a catastrophic threat not only to Brazil but also to the global environment.

Whether Rosneft ultimately benefits from the BR-319 isn’t the central issue. The broader concern is that transport infrastructure creates opportunities that didn’t previously exist. Infrastructure that initially appears to serve local populations can rapidly become an essential component of much larger industrial systems.

Researchers have long argued that the BR-319 should therefore be understood not simply by its own footprint but through the cumulative impacts of projects likely to follow. Many scientists insist that the highway cannot be evaluated independently from mining, fossil fuel and agribusiness expansion, or from the future state highways planned throughout the region.

Europe’s uncomfortable contradiction

The international dimension of the BR-319 debate became increasingly visible in May when ambassadors representing 17 European Union member states travelled to Manaus to discuss strategic investment opportunities with the Amazonas government. As reported by G1, among the projects presented were the BR-319, the Potássio do Brasil mine project in Autazes and Eneva’s Azulão gas field in Silves. The European Union Ambassador to Brazil, Marian Schuegraf, said:

The European Union wants to engage in the full spectrum of investments and cooperation. This could be in the bioeconomy with traditional products, but it could also be cooperation to establish digital connectivity in remote areas of the Amazon.

Publicly, European governments consistently portray themselves as champions of rainforest conservation, Indigenous rights and global climate action. However, these meetings revealed a more complicated reality, one which infrastructure, mining, natural gas and bioeconomy initiatives were discussed together as components of future investment.

No contradiction was openly acknowledged, but the optics were difficult to ignore. Projects criticised by scientists for potentially accelerating industrial expansion into one of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems were simultaneously presented to international partners seeking deeper economic cooperation with the state of Amazonas.

This episode illustrates how the future of the BR-319 is no longer solely a Brazilian question. Decisions taken in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, increasingly intersect with international investments, diplomatic priorities and global demand for minerals, energy and agricultural commodities.

Corruption, contracts and public money

As construction moves closer, another debate has begun unfolding almost unnoticed. It concerns not the environmental consequences of the BR-319, but the integrity of the public institutions responsible for delivering it.

As reported by several news outlets, Brazil’s Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), using its artificial intelligence auditing platform ALICE, identified indications of possible overpricing in contracts associated with the highway. Previous procurement processes linked to the BR-319 has also attracted judicial scrutiny, including rulings requiring the repayment of public funds following overbilling in earlier contracts.

More recently, attention has focused on construction companies selected through the new bidding process. One successful bidder, Etam Ltda., had previously featured in a major federal police investigation into alleged corruption and bid-rigging. Another company, LCM Construção e Comércio, became known nationally after rapidly emerging as one of the largest recipients of federal highway contracts during Lula’s current administration. LCM has been described as the “champion of asphalt” after signing 128 contracts with DNIT across 22 states. The total value of these contracts amounted to approximately $1.6 billion, exceeding the value of comparable contracts under the Bolsonaro administration and raising questions about concentration, political access and procurement oversight.

Neither circumstance proves wrongdoing regarding the BR-319 itself. Both companies deny any irregularities, while DNIT insists that its procurement processes have complied fully with Brazilian law. Nevertheless, the controversies raise unavoidable questions about transparency and oversight in one of the country’s most politically sensitive infrastructure projects.

If governance mechanisms already face significant challenges before reconstruction begins, critics ask how they will cope once hundreds of kilometres of highway, secondary roads and expanding industrial activity require continuous environmental monitoring.

The road history may remember

Supporters continue to describe the BR-319 as a highway connecting Manaus to the rest of Brazil. Its critics increasingly see something different: a decision capable of reshaping the future of the central Amazon for generations.

History rarely remembers infrastructure because it was well engineered. It remembers the landscapes that followed, the forests that disappeared, the rivers that changed course, the communities that were displaced and opportunities that were either seized or wasted. Whether the BR-319 ultimately becomes a symbol of sustainable development or one of the defining environmental contradictions of the 21^st century will depend not on speeches or political slogans, but on what happens after the asphalt ends.

President Lula once declared that Brazil does not need to destroy its forests to prosper. Few projects will test that promise more profoundly than the BR-319. If the warnings of scientists, Indigenous leaders and prosecutors prove correct, the highway may eventually be remembered not as the road that connected the Amazon to the rest of the country, but the road that opened one of the last great intact rainforests on Earth to forces that no government was ultimately able to control.

As it happens, the consequences will not affect only Brazil, they will extend far beyond its borders, shaping global climate stability, biodiversity and public health in ways that may take generations to fully understand.

History has not yet written the final chapter, but the decisions being taken today will determine who gets to write it.

Featured image: Smoke from fires and deforestation seen on the BR-319, on the edge of the municipality of Tapauá, Amazonas, Brazil, on 18 August 2021. Credit: Sandro Pereira/Fotoarena/Sipa USA.

Monica Piccinini

03 June 2026

Beneath Brazil’s forests, farms and cities, a vital water reserve is showing signs of strain. A new study indicates that groundwater levels in parts of the country are declining at rates comparable to those observed in some of the world’s most heavily exploited aquifer systems.

Water has always been central to Brazil’s identity, shaping its landscapes, economy and ecosystems. From rivers of the Amazon to the seasonal floods that transform the Pantanal into one of the world’s largest wetlands, water has helped define both the country’s geography and its development.

For generations, this abundance created the belief that Brazil would never face serious water shortages. However, evidence emerging from beneath the surface suggests that some groundwater reserves are becoming increasingly vulnerable to environmental and human pressures.

A study led by Augusto Getirana, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, examined more than two decades of groundwater dynamics across Brazil using satellite observations, artificial intelligence tools and groundwater monitoring systems.

The findings reveal a mixed picture. While some aquifers continue to recover naturally after periods of drought, others show persistent declines linked to agricultural expansion, mining activity, climate variability and growing water demand.

According to the researchers, groundwater declines observed in some Brazilian aquifers resemble patterns documented in heavily stressed groundwater systems in Bangladesh, India, Iran and the US, researchers reveal.

The study assessed groundwater conditions across Brazil’s 12 major river basins and examined several important aquifer systems, including the Alter do Chão, Urucuia, Bauru-Caiuá, Guarani, Pantanal, Solimões and Parecis.

Groundwater supplies approximately 55% of Brazil’s water demand and supports more than half of the country’s municipalities. In many regions, it provides a critical buffer during droughts and helps maintain water supplies when surface reservoirs decline.  

Despite its importance, groundwater monitoring remains limited. Across a territory of roughly 8.5 million square kilometres, Brazil operates only about 500 federal groundwater monitoring wells, leaving large areas insufficiently observed.

On the question of whether Brazil’s historical water abundance may have encouraged complacency, Getirana said:

I would not say that Brazil mistook abundance for security. What has changed is that the assumptions that worked in the past may not be sufficient for the future.

Over the past few decades, Brazil has experienced a series of major water crises, including the electricity rationing crisis of 2001, the severe droughts of 2014–2015, and the water shortages that affected several regions in 2021. At the same time, population growth and economic expansion have increased water demand.

Groundwater has increasingly become part of the solution. What surprised me in this study was seeing evidence that groundwater use for irrigation and public water supply has expanded enough to leave a detectable footprint on groundwater storage.

Brazil is not facing nationwide water insecurity today, but these findings suggest that the country’s traditional confidence in abundant water resources may need to be reconsidered in a changing climate and under growing demand.

Pressure beneath the Cerrado

Some of the strongest signs of groundwater decline are occurring in central Brazil, particularly in parts of the Cerrado and within the São Francisco and Paraná basins. These regions have also experienced extensive agricultural expansion.

Often overshadowed by the Amazon, the Cerrado is regarded by hydrologists as one of South American’s most important water-producing landscapes. Major river systems originate there, including rivers that contribute to the Amazon, Paraná, and São Francisco basins.

Native vegetation plays a crucial role in regulating water movement by allowing rainfall to infiltrate gradually into the soil, replenishing aquifers and sustaining river flows beyond the rainy season.

Over recent decades, millions of hectares of native vegetation have been converted into soya plantations, cattle pasture and irrigated agriculture.

The study found evidence that some aquifers experienced years in which little or no groundwater recharge occurred. In those years, rainfall failed to replenish underground reserves at historical rates. Researchers identified these patterns in portions of the Urucuia Aquifer, the Guarani Aquifer’s recharge zone and other heavily used groundwater systems.

Many of these areas support Brazil’s agricultural economy. If recharge rates continue to weaken, groundwater extraction could become increasingly difficult to sustain during prolonged droughts.

The São Francisco basin emerged as one of the regions experiencing the most severe groundwater losses in Brazil, driven by intensive water use, drought, land-cover change and shifting rainfall patterns.

As noted by Getirana, groundwater can mitigate drought impacts, although its reliability is declining in many regions:

During prolonged droughts, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs are typically the first water sources to decline. Forests help sustain water resources by promoting infiltration into the soil and aquifers, while also influencing regional atmospheric circulation and rainfall patterns. Aquifers often serve as the long-term reserve, the savings account of the hydrological system.

Our results suggest that groundwater systems are becoming less reliable in regions where water demand is highest. The strongest storage declines occur in densely populated and economically active regions, indicating that some of these natural safety nets are being placed under increasing pressure.

The Amazon

The Amazon contains some of the world’s largest freshwater reserves. While researchers found evidence that groundwater systems in parts of the region are becoming more variable, the changes are not uniform across the basin.

Getirana and colleagues found that large portions of the Amazon maintained stable groundwater conditions during the study period, and some regions even experienced gains in groundwater storage. These findings suggest that certain groundwater systems remain resilient under favourable environmental conditions.

Near Manaus, groundwater levels fluctuate in response to the seasonal rise and fall of the Negro and Solimões rivers. However, extreme climate events appear to be affecting these natural cycles.

The 2015-2016 El Niño event may have represented a significant shift in groundwater behaviour in several areas, with some aquifers moving from relatively stable conditions to more persistent declines.

Recent droughts have driven Amazon rivers to historically low levels, disrupting transportation, isolating communities and affecting ecosystems throughout the basin.

At the same time, southern Brazil has experienced severe flooding. The researchers note that groundwater conditions can influence flood risk because saturated underground systems lose their capacity to absorb additional rainfall, increasing runoff.

Taken together, these findings suggest that Brazil’s water challenges increasingly involve variability and extremes, rather than simple questions of water abundance or scarcity.

Reflecting on the wider significance of the findings, Getirana said:

I think one of the broader lessons is that abundance and sustainability are not the same thing. Brazil possesses some of the largest freshwater resources on Earth, yet our results show that groundwater systems can still experience persistent losses when climate variability, land-use change, and growing water demand act together.

Many societies have historically treated natural resources as effectively inexhaustible because they seemed abundant relative to human needs. What modern observations and satellite records increasingly show is that even very large systems have limits.

Groundwater is particularly important because it is largely invisible. Unlike rivers or reservoirs, changes underground can go unnoticed for years or even decades. Studies like this one help make those hidden changes visible before they become larger problems.

Fire, mining and groundwater extraction

The Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, is also experiencing growing pressure.

The researchers identified declining groundwater recharge in parts of the region, a trend associated with drought, land-use change and increasingly severe fire seasons.

Fires can have long-lasting effects on water systems, destroying vegetation, altering soil structure, reducing infiltration and making it more difficult for aquifers to recharge after dry periods.

Mining activity also contributes to additional pressure in some areas. In parts of the state of Minas Gerais, groundwater is pumped from underground systems to support mining operations. This can lower groundwater levels, alter river flows and affect surrounding communities.

Examples from other parts of the world demonstrate how difficult it can be to reverse the changes once large-scale extraction has altered water systems.

Around the Dead Sea, decades of river diversion, mineral extraction and groundwater overexploitation have contributed to a dramatic fall in water levels, accelerating shoreline retreat and the formation of thousands of sinkholes.

Similar concerns are emerging in Brazil’s Amazon. In Autazes, a major potash project being developed by the Canadian company Potássio do Brasil has raised warnings from researchers, Indigenous organisations and local communities about possible impacts on groundwater, wetlands and connected freshwater systems.

Environmental assessments and independent reviews have highlighted risks including increased sediment runoff, greater water turbidity and pressure on ecosystems linked to the Madeira River, one of the Amazon Basin’s most important waterways. While the long-term consequences remain uncertain, these cases illustrate how mining can alter water systems far beyond the boundaries of the extraction site itself.

An emerging challenge

Brazil isn’t running out of water, but abundant resources don’t eliminate vulnerability.

The study found that only a fraction of rainfall ultimately reaches and replenishes groundwater reserves. In some regions, recharge remains robust, but in others, it appears to be weakening.

Brazil experienced major water crises in 2000-2001, 2014-2017 and 2021. These events have often been viewed primarily as rainfall shortages.

The new findings suggests that deeper changes may also be affecting the country’s water systems. As climate change accelerates and pressure on land and water resources increases, groundwater is likely to become an increasingly important component of Brazil’s long-term water security.

Despite the challenges identified in the study, Getirana remains optimistic about the growing public awareness of water security issues:

Studies on water availability, drought, groundwater, and climate impacts are increasingly reaching mainstream media and public debate. Scientific knowledge alone does not change policy or management practices. Real change happens when governments, institutions, and society recognize the problem and act on the evidence.

The fact that groundwater and water security are becoming topics of national conversation in Brazil is encouraging. When science reaches the public and informs decision-making, it creates opportunities to improve monitoring, planning, and long-term water management.

When asked what people might see decades from now as the earliest indication that Brazil’s groundwater systems were under pressure, Getirana said:

The challenge today is not the absence of warning signs. The challenge is ensuring that this information becomes part of the decision-making process. Fifty years from now, I suspect people will look back and say that the first warning signs came from the combination of satellite observations, scientific studies, and recurring water crises that revealed vulnerabilities that had previously gone unnoticed.

For decades, Brazil relied on the assumption that abundant water resources would offset rising demand and environmental pressures. The evidence presented in this study suggests that protecting groundwater may become just as important as safeguarding rivers, forests and wetlands in the decades ahead.

Photo featured: Parintins, Brazil, September 2023. Boats stand at the edge of a river whose water level has dropped due to drought. Credit: Aguilar Abecassis/dpa/Alamy Live News

Monica Piccinini

19 January 2026

Polluted rivers, collapsing ecosystems and communities left to pick up the damage: Britain’s privatised water system has normalised environmental harm at home. Now the same model is being exported to Brazil, where its impacts could be even harder to undo.

In the UK, the sight of raw sewage pouring into rivers has become disturbingly familiar. What once caused outrage is now just background noise. Each year brings new data, new apologies from water companies, and new fines from regulators. Rivers remain polluted, wildlife declines, and communities are left to live with the consequences.

After more than three decades of water privatisation, the pattern is clear. Household bills keep rising, long-term investment has fallen, corporate debt has soared, and environmental damage has become routine. Regulation exists largely on paper, stepping in only after harm has already been done.

This matters because the UK’s failed water model is no longer contained within its borders. It’s now being exported to countries like Brazil. There, the damage risks being deeper, longer lasting and far harder to challenge and reverse.

Political

Brazil’s sanitation crisis is often blamed on geography or lack of development, but this is misleading, as it’s one of the most water-rich countries on Earth. The problem isn’t scarcity, but political decisions about who controls water and who it’s meant to serve.

Despite holding one of the world’s largest freshwater reserves, over 100 million Brazilians are without adequate sewage treatment.

Livi Gerbase, a researcher at the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) for Latin America and the Caribbean, frames access to water and sanitation as one of the clearest expressions of inequality in Brazil:

Access to water and sanitation is one of the strongest indicators of inequality in Brazil. Around 40 per cent of the population still lacks access to proper water and sanitation systems, particularly in rural areas and in the North and Northeast, where the most vulnerable communities live.

These failures fall disproportionally on poorer, racialised and rural communities, particularly in the North and Northeast of the country. This is environmental injustice, not technical failure.

These outcomes reflect political choices about ownership, financing and regulation, mirroring the path taken by the UK in the late 1980s, when water was removed from public control and redefined as a commercial service rather than shared resource.

Water as an asset

In 2020, Brazil passed the New Sanitation Legal Framework, promising near-universal of sanitation and water supply by 2033.

According to an analysis by CICTAR and the Union of Workers in Water, Sewage and Environment in the State of Bahia, SINDAE, this method was familiar: privatisation, private finance, and protections designed to reassure investors.

Municipalities in Brazil were encouraged to auction off water and sewage services through concessions lasting up to 35 years. Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, plays a central role, structuring deals and absorbing risk. At least 67 new sanitation projects are now moving forward, many explicitly structured to attract international capital.

The financing model mirrors the UK’s post-1989 settlement. Infrastructure is no longer funded primarily through public investment, but through debt (borrowing).

In Brazil, the key instrument is incentivised debentures, tax-exempt bonds sold to investors, which resembles the bond-heavy structures used by British water companies after privatisation.

Gerbase describes how Brazil’s 2020 sanitation reforms accelerated privatisation and shifted financial risk onto the public:

After the 2020 sanitation reforms, privatisation accelerated and international investors moved in. Incentivised debentures became a key tool, allowing companies to raise large sums quickly while the real cost is carried out by the public, not by companies or local authorities.

Between 2017 and 2024, nearly R$ 40 billion (£5.5 billion) was raised through these instruments in Brazil’s sanitation sector. More than half of this money wasn’t used to improve infrastructure, but to pay concession fees for refinance debt. This closely reflects the UK experience, where borrowing has been used to sustain corporate balance sheets rather than upgrade deteriorating systems.

Gerbase stresses that the use of incentivised debentures is a political choice that could be reversed through regulatory change:

Every incentivised debenture must be approved by the government, and there are already rules defining which projects qualify for the tax benefit. Through an executive decree changing the regulation of the incentive, it’d be possible to stop public funds being used to subside privatisation rather than infrastructure.

BRK and Thames Water

A detailed investigation by CICTAR identifies the strongest parallel with the UK in the case of BRK Ambiental, Brazil’s largest sanitation operator, controlled by Canadian asset manager Brooksfield, a major player in Britain’s privatised infrastructure and a familiar presence in the UK water sector.

In Brazil, BRK operates in more than 100 municipalities and has rapidly expanded through debt-backed acquisitions. The company has raised over R$12 billion (£1.6 billion) in debt, generating substantial interest payments, while average tariffs increased by more than 70 per cent between 2017 and 2024, far above inflation levels.

Gerbase explains how financialised concession models limit real investment, leaving poorer communities with inadequate alternatives:

These populations aren’t completely without solutions, but alternatives like septic tanks are only accessible to people with the financial means to build them. When companies spend large sums on concession fees and debt, very little is left for expanding and improving infrastructure. That’s exactly what the BRK model shows.

For UK households served by Thames Water, this story is well known. Rising bills are paired with rising debt, while environmental performance worsens and promised improvements fail to arrive.

Thames Water serves roughly a quarter of the population. Since privatisation, household bills have risen by roughly 40 per cent in real terms, while investment has fallen by around 15 per cent. Leakage remains widespread and rivers are routinely polluted with untreated sewage.

Thames Water’s failures are not an isolated case. This month, South East Water left at least 30,000 households without running water for several days, exposing the fragility of a system shaped by fragmented ownership and financialisaton.

South East Water is jointly owned by an Australian infrastructure fund, a Canadian private equity firm and the NatWest pension fund, underscoring how essential services are increasingly run by distant investors with no real stake in places affected by failures.

Regulation

Despite environmental failures, Thames Water accumulated tens of billions of pounds in debt, much of it used to finance shareholder payouts.

In 2023, it was fined £122.7 million for environmental breaches and now survives through emergency regulatory intervention.

Brazil’s moving in the same direction, but with weaker regulatory institutions and deeper inequality.

CICTAR records that BRK subsidiaries have been fined nearly R$50 million (£6.9 million) for environmental violations, including sewage discharges and failure to deliver contracted works. Complaints over water quality, billing and service interruptions are widespread.

Gerbase argues that regulation in Brazil tends to intervene only after harm has already occurred, offering limited accountability during long concessions:

Regulation is not very effective. What usually happens is that problems escalate until fines and sanctions have already failed to change company behaviour. The biggest moment for accountability comes when a concession ends and the process starts again, because public scrutiny increases. But in BRK’s case, most concessions still have many years left to run.

As in the UK, regulation is slow and fragmented. Long term contracts limit public oversight, while political leaders are reluctant to challenge powerful private operators. Parliamentary inquiries in Brazilian states such as Tocantins have raised concerns about accountability, echoing debates long familiar in Britain.

Research evidence undermines the case for privatisation. A comparative study published in Frontiers in Water found that public sanitation providers in Brazil frequently outperform private ones on efficiency, service quality and equity, directly challenging claims that private ownership delivers better outcomes.

Exporting failure

This is fundamentally an environmental justice issue. The United Nations recognises access to water and sanitation as human rights, yet privatised systems allocate access according to profitability, not social need.

In both Brazil and the UK, the same communities pay the highest price. Poorer areas face higher bills, worse service and greater exposure to pollution.

Smaller municipalities in Brazil, like deprived areas in the UK, are less attractive to investors because returns are slower and risks higher.

Reports suggest that Brooksfield is preparing to sell BRK Ambiental, treating it as a mature asset. If the UK experience is any guide, the likely legacy will be a heavily indebted operator with limited capacity to invest, while communities remain locked in long term contracts they didn’t design.

For UK readers, the lesson is clear. Britain’s water crisis isn’t an exception, it’s a template. From the Thames to Brazil, the same financial logic produces the same results: polluted rivers, rising bills, weakened accountability and deepening inequality.

The UK is a major warning sign of how things can go wrong. Our research shows that Brazil is heading in the same direction, even if it has not fully collapsed yet, said Gerbase.

Environmental justice means rebuilding public control, prioritising ecological repair, and measuring success in clean rivers, public health and dignity, not investor returns and exit strategies.

Brazil’s being sold the same promises Britain heard more than 30 years ago. In the UK, the outcome is already visible in polluted rivers and failing infrastructure. That alone should make us deeply sceptical of treating water, anywhere, as just another asset.

Featured image: London, UK. 30 August 2025. Environmental activists from Extinction Rebellion, accompanied by the Red Rebels mime troupe, drop a large banner demanding “Stop Polluting Our Rivers” from Westminster Bridge over the River Thames. According to the UK’s Environment Agency, raw sewage outflow into England’s rivers and seas doubled in 2023, with only 14% of rivers achieving “good” ecological status in 2025, while profits and dividend payouts of private water companies have soared. Credit: Ron Fassbender/Alamy Live News

Monica Piccinini

1 December 2025

On 27 November, the National Emergency Briefing on Climate & Nature took place at Central Hall Westminster, bringing together leading experts from climate science, national security, energy, food systems, health, and the economy.

Their mission was to deliver a stark, science-led wake up call to politicians, business leaders, and the media of the accelerating threats facing the UK.

The message left the room in no doubt: Britain isn’t ready for what’s coming.

Naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham opened the event with a stark warning:

This beautiful little blue planet is where we will either learn to live in harmony with the environment or we will destroy ourselves and much of other life, too.

He stressed that misinformation isn’t just corrupting public opinion – it’s corrupting policy:

A dangerous wave of misinformation and lies fills our lives. But worse, it fills the lives of our decision makers. And these are the people who shape policy.

His challenge to MPs was simple:

You must listen to the science because if you don’t, then things go wrong and lives are lost.

15,000 scientists have already warned that environmental breakdown is pushing societies toward “socio-economic collapse.”

Recent heatwaves, deadly floods and supply chain shocks, once treated rare events, are now early warnings of a destabilising global system.

Experts argue this demands a response on the scale of wartime mobilisation, coordinated across government, backed by clear public communication, and grounded in science, not politics.

The contradiction at the heart of UK energy policy

Several speakers highlighted a dangerous contradiction at the heart of UK policy: while climate risks intensify, Britain’s still building infrastructure as if the climate were stable and predictable.

Even as talk of a green transition grows louder, the country still relies heavily on fossil fuels at home and abroad.

Professor Mike Berners-Lee said the world has had more than three decades of warnings, yet emissions are still rising:

As we’ve just heard, it’s not surprising that the climate is coming to bite us after 30 COPs have failed to even reduce the rate at which we’re putting fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. It’s still going up year on year. It hasn’t even begun to come down.

Economist Angela Francis argued that markets currently reward polluting industries and punish those trying to change:

Net-zero and nature-positive solutions will not win in markets which take for granted a stable climate, clean air, fresh water, pollinators.

As Lt Gen Richard Nugee explained, decentralised clean energy delivers “more secure energy, more resilient infrastructure and a safer, more stable society.”

Despite the warning and proven alternatives, the UK still grants new fossil fuels licenses.

British energy decisions ripple far across the planet and eventually circle back to affect us here.

Take Brazil, now a hotspot for British oil ambitions. BP announced its biggest oil and gas find in the Santos Basin. Shell also continues to expand in Gato do Mato, a deep-water project in the pre-salt area, also in the Santos Basin. Thousands of miles away, these operations contribute to emissions the UK claims to be cutting.

Researchers at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) show that much of the UK’s real carbon footprint is hidden in imported goods and financed industries abroad. We may cut emissions from our homes and power stations, but carbon generated on our behalf in other countries remains massive.

More than half of the emissions linked to daily UK consumption happen outside the UK. The clothes we wear, the food on our tables, and the fuel we pump from foreign soil all carry a hidden climate cost.

There’s no distinction between a tonne of carbon in Aberdeen or São Paulo. The warming it causes returns to us in the form of rising seas, harsher storms, droughts and climate extremes.

If Britain wants to lead, it must confront not only what its own emissions, but the consequences of its footprint overseas.

Food security

Food security featured heavily in the briefing. The Climate Change Committee warned that national planning on food resilience is “insufficient”, red-rated across key indicators.

Professor Paul Behrens warned:

I’m going to tell you about a threat that will affect everyone in this room, every family in this country, and every constituent – a threat for which we’re woefully unprepared. And I’m talking about the increasing pressure on global food supplies in the face of accelerating climate change and nature loss.

This is what happens when food systems fail. Empty supermarket shelves, people queuing for hours for food, protests, and civil unrests.

Britain depends on a food system that stretches across the globe, a system growing ever more fragile. It imports around 40-50% of its food. What we buy and eat here affects forests, farmers, and communities thousands of miles away. Shocks abroad return as higher prices, shortages, and climate-driven disruptions.

NGO Global Witness found that last year alone, UK demand for forest-risk commodities, including beef, soy, palm oil, cocoa, coffee and rubber, drove deforestation equivalent to the size of major British cities.

Laws like the Environment Act promised safeguards, but key measures have never been implemented. Supply chains linked to illegal deforestation continue largely unchecked, almost half arriving in the first six months of Labour’s new term.

The climate footprint of global agribusiness is staggering. Research by Foodrise shows the five largest meat and dairy companies (JBS, Marfrig, Tyson, Minerva and Cargill) emit more greenhouse gases than oil giants like Chevron, Shell or BP. Their methane alone exceeds the combined output of the UK and EU.

Rich countries like the UK consume the most meat and dairy, so the choices we make abroad end up driving the very climate disasters we face at home.

Food insecurity isn’t just about climate related. Global agribusiness is dominated by a handful of powerful corporations controlling seeds, fertilisers, livestock feed, and even crop genetics. This concentration weakens resilience, increases inequality, accelerates ecological destruction, and traps farmers into dependency.

Meanwhile, small-scale farmers, whether in Brazil or here at home, receive a fraction of the support (subsidies) industrial agriculture gets, despite producing most of the food consumed locally.

The UK can’t claim security while shifting risk onto others. Every import, every policy, every meal in Britain carries a global footprint. Food insecurity abroad returns as floods, fires, shortages, and soaring prices at home.

Behrens said:

We need a great food transformation built on four main pillars. Shifting to plant-rich diets, reducing food waste, improving production, and increasing climate resilience.

Health: how climate change is already hitting the UK

Climate change isn’t just a future threat; it’s already making people sick here. Rising heatwaves are taking lives now.

Professor Hugh Montgomery explained:

Without a functioning economy, without food supply available to us, we can’t run a health service. We can’t have health.

The climate emergency is a health emergency. And it’s about time we started treating these.

According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), 1,311 heat-related deaths occurred in England in 2024 alone. Without action, the NHS projects heat-related deaths could reach around 10,889 by 2050.

Warmer conditions are expanding the range of disease-carrying insects like ticks and mosquitoes. The UK’s HECC report warns that species such as Aedes albopictus, which can carry dengue, Zika, or chikungunya, could become more common here.

Climate-sensitive infections are rising. Changes in temperature and rainfall make food and water-borne illnesses more likely and alter how other pathogens spread.

At the same time, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the “superbug” problem, is worsening. Heavy antibiotic use in global food systems, combined with climate impacts on sanitation, helps resistant bacteria thrive.

The impacts hit the most vulnerable hardest. Poorer communities are more exposed to heat, air pollution, and emerging infections, and less able to adapt.

The message is simple: cutting emissions, reforming food systems, and investing in resilient health services aren’t distant policies, they’re essential to protecting lives in the UK and globally.

The cost of delay

The economic reality is no softer. The latest Lancet Countdown report  estimates that extreme heat wiped 639 billion working hours in 2024, more than a trillion dollars in lost income. Agriculture was hit hardest.

Behind those figures are real stories: farm workers forced out of the fields by midday heat, construction workers slowing down to avoid heat exhaustion, and entire shifts cut short because temperatures simply became too dangerous.

The report makes the case that it doesn’t have to be this way: investing in cleaner energy and building resilience into communities could protect both livelihoods and the people who depend on them.

Angela Francis highlights a striking economic truth: the faster we transition away from fossil fuels, the more money we save:

The Oxford Martin School and the Smith School have been looking at this in the context of the energy transition. They compared a fast, a slow, and no transition. And faster is cheaper.

The faster transition saves $12 trillion compared to staying on fossil fuels. That’s more than twice the saving of a slow transition.

National security: conflict & migration

Climate change is already driving global instability. Crop failures, food shortages and worsening weather are pushing some regions towards crisis.

As rising heat, drought and sea-level change make parts of the world unliveable, researchers now suggest that 20–25% of people in some areas may be forced to relocate, far more than earlier projections.

These pressures feed conflict, overwhelm border systems destabilise economies and, ultimately, pose direct security risks to Britain.

Senior UK military figures have warned repeatedly: climate change is no longer a distant or secondary issue. It’s a central threat shaping global security.

Lt Gen Richard Nugee highlighted the security risks of a warming planet:

Climate change can be thought of as a threat multiplier, making existing threats worse and more frequent and introducing new threats. Climate shocks fuel global instability.

People are forced to move within countries and across borders – that puts pressure on receiving regions, can stoke instability, and feeds into wider political tensions.

There’s risk of conflict over access, over resources, and of course, over shipping routes. So, the climate crisis is now shaping strategic and military competition.

But what concerns me most is not any single crisis. It’s crises cascading together. Multiple crises, food, health, infrastructure, migration, energy, extreme weather, etc., all hitting at the same time, eroding trust in government by slow or failed responses and reactionary politics claiming to be able to solve all these crises at once.

A briefing that demands action

Organisers stress that the event is non-partisan. Its purpose is to ensure MPs; business leaders and the media understand the scale of the emergency – and the pathways out of it.

Among the recommendations include establishing a permanent Climate COBRA, reviving public information campaigns and holding annual briefings to keep decision-makers accountable.

The experts insist that the solutions already exist. What’s missing is the courage to act quickly and decisively.

The warning from the briefing was unmistakable: delay isn’t neutral. Its costs are measured in lost harvests, rising instability, mounting deaths and a future made harsher with every year of inaction.

The briefing left one question hanging in the air, one now facing the country as a whole: if this isn’t the moment to mobilise, then what is?

Featured image: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy