How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist's Fatal Quest for Answers - Paperback

by Dom Phillips (Author)

"A book both brilliant and broken, [and] one that is ultimately as inspiring and devastating as the Amazon itself."--The Guardian

"The book nearly died with him in the Amazon. But the story endured. . . [Chapters are] rooted in conflict, but searching for solutions."--The New York Times

Journalist Dom Phillips traveled deep into the Amazon rainforest searching for solutions to the problem of deforestation, a threat to the local ecosystem, native tribes, and the global climate. When he was murdered in the Javari Valley by a group of environmental criminals, a cohort of journalists and activists took up his work to finish his book and share his important message.

During the dark days of the Bolsonaro administration, journalist Dom Phillips set out to accomplish an ambitious goal: through research, interviews, and site visits deep into the rainforest, he would emerge with a book answering the question, "How can we save the Amazon?" Dom's investigation led him through Amazonia, where the drug trade, ranching, fires, illegal fishing, and mining have degraded millions of acres of important forest ecosystems, creating dangerous conditions for the Indigenous communities who have called the Amazon home for thousands of years. Searching for strategies to protect both the land and the people who inhabit it, Dom connected with politicians, farmers, and Indigenous activists. But in June of 2022, while traveling by boat to the Javari Valley with Brazilian expert on Indigenous affairs Bruno Pereira, Dom and Bruno were brutally murdered.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, a group of expert writers, journalists, activists, and colleagues took up Dom's partially completed manuscript in a mission to uncover the answers he sought. Blending in-depth reporting with a relentless pursuit of the truth, the result--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.

"A work of courage interrupted by tragedy. . . No book speaks more persuasively to the importance of the Amazon and the dangers that it faces."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

"We can't let life on this earth be snuffed out; this powerful book will help us rise to this challenge."--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

Author Biography

Dom Phillips was a British journalist working for publications like The Guardian and The Washington Post. An unconventional career path (he got his start as a journalist covering techno clubs for Mixmag and authoring Superstar DJs, Here We Go!) took him to Brazil, where he became passionate about the issues affecting the Amazon rainforest and its Indigenous populations. In 2022, while researching this topic and working on How to Save the Amazon, Dom and his travel companion Bruno Pereira went missing in the Javari Valley in a remote part of the Amazon. Intense public interest and pressure fomented via social media, and Brazilian police eventually found the bodies of the two men and made arrests in connection to their murders. Dom was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 2021 and was also the 2021 Cissy Patterson Environmental Fellow. In 2019, he was nominated for a Gabo Prize (Latin America's premier journalism award) for his coverage of the Amazon "Fire Day" for Reporter Brasil.