Jump in child deaths reveals impact of industrialisation on Amazon’s Indigenous peoples

As an economic boom’s gains pass them by, people in unprotected land have been hit by hunger and disease, with infant mortality rates seven times higher than the rest of Brazil

The infant mortality rate among the Indigenous peoples of Brazil jumped by 16% last year, according to new data, as experts warn that the expansion of legal and illegal extractive industries in the Amazon rainforest has had profound effects on the health and quality of life of Indigenous people living in unprotected areas.

Over the past 50 years, the Amazon’s landscape has changed dramatically, with about 17% of the primary forest now gone, replaced by towns, roads, cattle ranches, mines and vast fields of soya beans.