Listening to the Amazon
SEPTEMBER 10, 2024
Photo by Nicola Zolin
The Reporter’s Notebook is our monthly interview series with Dial contributors. This week we are bringing you a special dispatch from the Amazon rainforest. To receive these conversations directly in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
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A conversation with Paloma De Dinechin, whose reporting on the scientists recording the sounds of the Amazon rainforest was published in our Lessons issue.
Launched in 2017, Project Providence is attempting to record, in real time, the sounds of the Amazon rainforest to study the impact of climate change and human activities on the forest’s ecosystem. Paloma de Dinechin traveled to the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas to meet the bioacoustic engineers working on the project and understand how these sounds are captured. “If you want to understand why it is important to protect [the Amazon], you need to be able to explain what is so unique about it,” De Dinechin said in a conversation with Dial Deputy Editor Esther King. The interview was edited for clarity.
THE DIAL: What interested you about this project to map the sounds of the Amazon? Were you already familiar with the field of bioacoustics when you started reporting?
PALOMA DE DINECHIN: I went to the Amazon for another story a year ago. I was investigating water defenders and wrote about a man from a quilombo — a settlement founded by black fugitives from slavery — who was murdered during a dispute over water resources. Since 2012, more than 1,900 environmental defenders have been killed, and 70 percent of those deaths took place in Latin American. The Amazon, in particular, is one of the most dangerous places to be an environmental campaigner. So I discovered the Amazon with this story.
After this, I saw that most stories coming out of the Amazon are about deforestation, but people who work to save the Amazon work in silence. There is not a lot of noise about it.
The Pulitzer Center had a reporting grant to pursue the work of Dom Philipps, the Guardian reporter who was killed in 2022 while reporting a book about the Amazon. When they put out a call for stories, I knew I wanted to do it. I felt it was important to say, OK you have killed the journalist, but you have not killed the story or what he was trying to do.
I was looking for different stories about the Amazon, and I saw that they were using drones to track deforestation. I was really interested in the mix between technology and ancestrality. If you haven’t been to the Amazon, you imagine there are no phones and no electricity, and there are parts that are like that, but there are also parts that have technology. So I was interested in that, and there was not a lot written about bioacoustics in the Amazon. I started reading local articles to find some names, and little by little, I went deeper into the topic and started to work on it with my colleague, the Italian photographer Nicola Zolin.
THE DIAL: You traveled to some very remote areas for this piece. Was that a challenge, and how did you prepare for the risks involved?
PDD: To be honest, I was actually more concerned about the mosquitoes than the idea that someone was going to kill me. Your body is not used to it, so you can be in the same place as a local and you’ll get 300 bites and they’ll get maybe three. So that is a big challenge, to be honest, and the disease that may come from the mosquitoes was a concern.
But when it comes to safety, every year is the most dangerous year for environmentalists — every year the number of people killed increases. Of course, journalists working on environmental issues are also at risk.
When I go, I try to be in the safest situation possible. So I cannot compare my situation, for example, to a local person who lives there, who can be tracked down in their home if someone doesn’t like the work they are doing. And in this case we were working with scientists. Of course, they can face difficult situations too, but because they have been working here for many years, they choose areas that are safer.
It’s more difficult to ensure your safety when you’re a freelancer and you don’t have a newsroom behind you. In this case, we had a grant covering most of our expenses, including any needs we might have had in terms of security.
THE DIAL: You also shadowed a number of people as they were working, both in scientific labs and in the rainforest. Why was that important to you, and was it difficult to gain access to them?
PDD: I think it’s so important to show how challenging it is to do anything in the Amazon. For example, when the scientists are installing a satellite antenna on top of a tree, which is about 15 meters high. If you don’t see how it’s done, it might sound easy. But just bringing the material to these places is incredibly difficult, you might be walking through water and you’ll need at least half a day. Two people will climb the tree to install the satellite, and the tree sways a lot. They are so high up, they become easy to confuse with monkeys.
I wanted to show that the scientists are also at risk when they work. They have to cross rivers that are full of jacarès, the local crocodiles. They are always with a guide; they don’t go alone in the forest because you never know what can happen.
I’ve also always been someone who wants to be in the field. I don’t write anything from my sofa.
It was also important for me to explain the connection the indigenous communities have to the rainforest. If you want to understand why it is important to protect it, you need to be able to explain what is so unique about it. The first time you go to the rainforest, you think, wow, please don’t touch anything. Everything looks so perfect. It’s so alive. It’s so noisy. And when you spend time with the people who live there, who know how to imitate all of the sounds the animals make, you understand why it’s so important. It’s deeper than just protecting nature. It’s about protecting our home.
THE DIAL: Could you tell us more about the state of the Amazon currently, and what impact the recent political changes in Brazil have had on efforts to preserve it?
PDD: It’s quite sad because a third of the forest is already gone. The Amazon crosses nine countries and in each country the challenge to protect it is different. Now every year, around 2 percent of the forest disappears. That’s because there is deforestation, gold digging and exploitation. There are also more than 300 communities that live there.
In Brazil specifically, Jair Bolsonaro pushed for the extraction of resources from the forest during his mandate. Farmers felt empowered to continue activities that contributed to deforestation, such as lighting fires. Bolsonaro also cut money to the foundation that protects indigenous people, FUNAI. That had major consequences for the protection of the Amazon.
Since then, the numbers have improved but it is still a challenge. It’s a big economic issue as well, because it requires a big political investment. There are too many indigenous communities that have been left alone to deal with deforestation and criminal activities.
In Europe, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seen as the protector of the Amazon, but the picture is a little more complex. Lula’s main message is that Brazil needs other countries to get involved and to help fund the protection of the rainforest. The global COP30 summit in Brazil next year will be a big test for Lula. He has been very vocal about the need to protect the Amazon and he is pushing to create an international fund to help do that. All eyes will be on Brazil, so there is an opportunity to do something, to really come up with a plan.
THE DIAL: What surprised you most in the process of reporting this piece? Did it change your perception on environmental issues?
PDD: There’s the impact the rainforest has on you, as I described. Since reporting this piece, I’ve also been much more sensitive to sounds. I’m noticing things that I wasn’t paying attention to before, like noise pollution or the sound of birds. I also now better understand the importance of the parks we have in cities, which can be sanctuaries for animals.
THE DIAL: What are you working on next? Are there any lessons from your experience reporting this piece that you will take with you?
PDD: I would like now to work on a video documentary series where we bring scientists and people together to discuss environmental challenges, because I feel like the science can be very remote. I would like to bring this world closer, as I did in my piece about the Amazon.
I think we need more dialogue. With social media, we tend to stay in our bubbles and only read things that confirm our beliefs. But I think we need something called in French, penser contre soi — literally, thinking against yourself. It means challenging your own beliefs and speaking with people who have different point of views. I think that’s essential.
Europe has an ambitious plan to be carbon neutral in 2050, for example. But this brings fear, of course, because many sectors will be affected. We need to discuss this more, because it’s normal that people have fears. It’s so important to bring complexity and nuance to these topics. And as journalists, I think we need to stick to facts, facts, facts — that is how we can make an impact.
PALOMA DE DINECHIN is a French investigative journalist. She studied political science with a specialization in Latin America before completing her master’s at the Sciences Po Journalism School. She was recognized in the category of outstanding investigative reportage by the Fetisov Journalism Awards in 2021 and was a finalist for the Gabo Prize in 2022.,
ESTHER KING is the deputy editor of The Dial, and a journalist based in Brussels. She was a founding member of Politico’s European newsroom, where she edited features and op-eds and later led a team of journalists covering sustainability. She has reported on Europe’s response to the George Floyd protests in 2020, Belgium’s attempts to reckon with its colonial history and the crackdown on volunteers working with migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.