How to Save the Amazon: A journalist's deadly quest for answers - Hardcover

Phillips, Dom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1786581833 ISBN 13: 9781786581839

Publisher: Ithaka, 2025

Synopsis

'Ultimately as inspiring and devastating as the Amazon itself' The Guardian

'Bold, pacy, bursting with optimism and filled with vivid descriptions, this is the work of an indomitable soul' - Guy Shrubsole

A brilliantly colourful work of reportage ... a haunting and truly important read' - The Telegraph

RECIPIENT OF A WHITING FOUNDATION AWARD

On 5 June 2022, award-winning journalist Dom Phillips was working on this book, alongside the indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, when they were both shot. They are believed to have been assassinated by one of the criminal networks whose ecological exploitation they were working to expose.

As the world becomes more aware of the significance of the Amazon, home to nearly 400 billion trees, working in this vast region has become ever more dangerous for activists and journalists. Fires, land grabs, and the invasion of reserves have all spiked over recent decades, pushing the world's biggest forest ever closer to a point of no return. The last few years have seen efforts to reduce deforestation, but the question remains; can we save this globally essential ecosystem before it is too late?

A group of expert writers took up Phillips' partially completed manuscript, committed to his mission of uncovering the truth about deforestation and searching for solutions. Blending in-depth reporting and encounters with indigenous activists, ecologists, farmers, and political figures, How to Save The Amazon is a dazzling account of how we can fight ecological destruction and stand in solidarity with the Earth's environmental defenders.

About this title

About the Author

Dom Phillips was a highly experienced and award-winning British freelance journalist. He moved to Brazil in 2007 and wrote extensively for British and American newspapers such as The Guardian and Washington Post. In 2021 he was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship for his book project How to Save the Amazon, and made the 2021 Cissy Patterson Environmental Fellow. In June 2022, Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were killed in a remote part of the Amazon while Dom was researching this book. In 2023, How to Save the Amazon was awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant by the Whiting Foundation, and in 2024 Dom's widow, Alessandra Sampaio, set up the Dom Phillips Institute in his memory. At the request of Alessandra and Dom's relatives, the unfinished work on the book was completed by a dedicated team of international writers and journalists brought together by Jonathan Watts, The Guardian's Environment Correspondent.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ithaka
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1786581833
• ISBN 13: 9781786581839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384