“Amazon deforestation gig economy booms despite COVID-19”, 03 June 2020 

Illegal deforestation has become an omnipresent part of economic activity in the Brazilian Amazon...Some experts hoped that COVID-19 would slow Amazon deforestation, but early indications are that the reverse is happening. From January to April 2020, the rate of Amazon deforestation alerts rose sharply by 55%. Deforestation is linked closely with fires, so a challenging fire season is expected this year...

We spent  a couple of weeks in Rondônia, stepping into the universe of illegal loggers and miners, a rainforest landscape inhabited mostly by men, though also women, who treat their work in the employ of often shadowy elites, as perpetually shifting “temporary arrangements.”When asked about the legality of cutting down the Amazon’s towering trees, or mining for gold that poisons Amazon rivers with silt and mercury, these poorly paid men seemed resigned to their fates. They justify their jobs in this gig economy simply: “We have to survive somehow,” …