Click here for the original audio.

As destruction of the Amazon rainforest gets closer to a tipping point, environmental crimes there have become violent, enforcement has been gutted and many local politicians are themselves perpetrators of the deforestation.

Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd talks with the Washington Post’s Rio de Janeiro bureau chief Terrence McCoy who is the lead reporter for the series “The Amazon, Undone” revealing how crime, corruption and greed are speeding the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.