Geographical Magazine May 2023 Back Issue

Our theme of this issue is hope. For most of our lives, the Amazon has played a crucial role in our understanding of how we’re looking after our planet. Its sheer size and heft helped it become the symbol of the existential threat we face from the rapacious over-exploitation of resources. Hopes were high as the rate of deforestation started to dip at the turn of the century. But the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil five years ago quickly dashed such optimism. This month, Mark Rowe looks at the challenges Luis Inácio Lula da Silva faces on his return to power to mitigate the destruction of recent years (see Page 28).  Hope, sadly, is in shorter supply for the Rohingya people trapped in a vast complex of refugee camps in Bangladesh after fleeing genocide in their home across the Naf River in Myanmar. Writer and photographer Gabriele Cecconi first visited the camps in 2018 to document the dramatic and brutal exodus. He returned last year to see how nearly a million people have fared in the interim (see Page 44).