Since its inception, the Data Fixers project has made significant progress in investigating land grabbing and illegal deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Led by Luiz Fernando Toledo and Natasha Ribeiro, the project aims to gather and organize data from multiple databases and agencies in order to write stories about these crimes and partner with news outlets in Brazil and abroad.
One of the major achievements of the project is the publication of several investigative reports. In a 2-month cross-border investigation with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the team uncovered suspicious activity of a group of bowmakers who were suspected of trafficking endangered Brazilian wood to make violin and cello bows.
Read about that investigation in English (OCCRP), Portuguese (Piauí 1 / 2)
The Washington Post and the BBC also used the Data Fixers’ expired fines dataset and support to investigate Brazil’s struggles with enforcing environmental crimes.
Read these stories at the Washington Post or the BBC
In addition, the Data Fixers team was hired by InfoAmazonia to develop a project on environmental crimes in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. This project, titled “Cross-Border Investigation Into the Criminal Networks That Run the Amazon,” is ongoing.
The data gathered by Data Fixers is also made available to other journalists and researchers through the online platform Aleph. A newsletter in both Portuguese and English also provides insights about the data and its findings.
Overall, the Data Fixers project has made significant strides in investigating and exposing illegal deforestation and land grabbing in the Amazon Rainforest. The team’s efforts have led to important investigative stories and continue to provide valuable data for other journalists and researchers.
Follow the project and its successes at datafixers.org.
Photo Credit: IAT/PARANÁ