Heriberto Araujo: ‘Small farmers can help save the Amazon’

Transfer illegally held land from big ranchers to small farmers who don’t have the incentives to deforest, argues the investigative journalist in his book ‘Masters of the Lost Land’.

The World Today
4 minute READ

Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Fight to Own the Amazon
Heriberto Araujo, Atlantic Books, £20

Heriberto Araujo is a Spanish investigative journalist who spent four years in Brazil writing his second book ‘Masters of the Lost Land’. It tells the story of Maria Joel Dias da Costa, who became a well-known land-rights activist in the Amazon region after her husband was murdered by a local cattleman. 

You say in your book that you wanted to write a story about the destruction of the Amazon but instead wrote about a land-rights activist and her murdered husband. What changed your mind?

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