How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist’s Fatal Quest for Answers

This valiant posthumous debut from journalist Phillips aims to synthesize all the “innovative solutions” for saving the Amazon rainforest that are viable in the face of obstacles like corrupt politicians, illegal land-grabs, cattle-related deforestation—and murder. That includes the murder of Phillips himself, who in 2022 was gunned down halfway through writing the book by illicit fishermen in the Amazon’s Javari Valley. (The book’s final chapters each have a different cowriter.) Phillips’s death lends the narrative both pathos and relevance, since violence against those who try to defend the rainforest against economic interests has been rampant in the Amazon for decades—as Phillips notes while gamely attempting to untangle the “mess” of Brazil’s Amazon-related politics. However, though Phillips interviews everyone from politicians to small-scale farmers to Indigenous activists, no one agrees on how to halt Amazonian destruction and turn a profit anyway. Proposals range from agroforestry to biopharmacy, but the most radical is tucked into the afterword, in which Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader, eschews the profit motive altogether: “We need... to avoid the rhetorical trap that claims Indigenous people... need to be productive.” The book’s strongest moments are when Phillips takes readers into the Amazon to encounter its incredible flora and fauna; the writing crackles then, showing, not just telling, that here are riches worth saving. It’s a poignant appeal for rethinking the Amazon’s economy. (June)