Solar power and innovation the way to save the Amazon rainforests
Ituxi Extractive Reserve, Brazil — In the darkest reaches of Brazil’s Amazon, solar panels are bringing light — and could help save the rainforest. Aurelio Souza is working to install solar panels in villages along the remote Purus and Ituxi rivers in the western Amazonas state. "The Amazon is the last big frontier for electricity in the country," says the consultant for a joint programme of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Brazil’s environmental agency ICMBio. "You have at least 2-million people [in the Brazilian Amazon] without access to modern energy." Bringing power to millions might not sound like an obvious way to preserve the world’s greatest forest, already under constant pressure from loggers and farmers — but consider what the solar panels are replacing. In tiny communities of the Ituxi nature reserve, west of the city of Labrea, small-scale farmers almost universally depend on noisy, smoky generators for light and refrigeration — and frequent trips to buy more fuel at hi...
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