| By Olivia Rudgard When Chief Raoni Metuktire was a young man, the Amazon rainforest was a different place. "Nature was all around us," says the Indigenous Brazilian leader and environmentalist. "We could make long trips, travel across the land. There wasn't anything stopping us. The forest was big." Over half a century later, a fifth of that forest has been lost. Areas that were once remote and unspoiled are now cut through with roads and farms, and the land Raoni's people occupy is much smaller. Since satellites started tracking the Amazon in 1972, there has been a "radical transformation across the southern and eastern frontiers," says Douglas C. Morton, an Earth system scientist with NASA. "People are no longer clearing 10 hectares at a time. People are clearing 10,000 hectares in a weekend." The Amazon's plight set the tone for Raoni's remarkable life, which has taken him out of Brazil's Mato Grosso state and all over the world to meet presidents, celebrities and business leaders. Raoni worked with Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president in the late 1950s, and was the subject of a 1978 documentary narrated by Marlon Brando. In 1989, he mounted a campaign against deforestation with pop star Sting, which prompted the Brazilian government to recognize the Menkragnoti Indigenous Territory — millions of hectares of rainforest that includes Raoni's home.  Chief Raoni Metuktire during an interview in London on June 25. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg Now in his 90s, Raoni is still traveling the world, including a sojourn to the Bloomberg office in London, where he spoke to Bloomberg Green. Flanked by family and associates who translated the discussion to and from his native language, Raoni wears a headdress and an ornamental disk in his lip — cutting a striking figure amid the suits of London's Square Mile. Long ignored or persecuted, Indigenous people are increasingly involved in global discussions about the Amazon, where roughly 1.5 million of them live. The world's forests have also risen to the top of the climate agenda. In 2022, 195 nations agreed to protect and restore at least 30% of the Earth's land and water by 2030. Deforestation is expected to be a major topic at next year's United Nations climate summit. With that attention — and public awareness — has come some progress. Around 2005, the pace of deforestation in the Amazon slowed from 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) per year to 5,000 square kilometers. It rose again during Jair Bolsonaro's presidency between 2019 and 2022, but dropped to less than 10,000 square kilometers in 2023 as Bolsonaro's successor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, bolstered enforcement. "I'd like to think that we're heading in the right direction," says Michael T. Coe, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. But the threat to the rainforest is also being exacerbated by a warming world. Roughly 5% of the Amazon is no longer suitable for rainforest at all, and is turning into other landscapes such as savannah or drier forests. "The ideal climate for rainforest is shrinking," Coe says. Those impacts are felt disproportionately by Indigenous people, who depend on the ecosystems damaged by deforestation and don't benefit from its economic activity. "The wealth is not shared locally. The Amazon region is among the poorest and most underserved areas in Brazil," says WRI Brasil Executive Director Cristiane Fontes. There is evidence that Indigenous people are successfully protecting some of the most carbon-rich parts of the Amazon, but Raoni has noticed droughts, heat and changes to rainfall. "The banks in your country here must stop sending money to Brazil, investing in deforestation," he says.  WATCH: This Amazon Chief Has a Warning for the World Even as he approaches 100, Raoni doesn't blink at traveling thousands of miles to fight for his homeland. He traces his skill with advocacy back to the 1950s, when Raoni was in his early 20s and first met someone outside of his community. The Villas Boas brothers, Brazilian activists and advocates for the Indigenous, came to his village. They quickly bonded. Claudio Villas Boas was "the man that really taught me about white people and the way they think," Raoni says. "So now I can defend the forest." Read and share a full version of this story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate and energy news and original data and graphics reporting, please subscribe. | 
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