BOGOR, Indonesia—When Brazilian researcher Maria Fernanda Gebara thinks of her first visit to the Amazon municipality São Félix do Xingu in 2010, the first thing she remembers is the smoke.
“My eyes were burning all the time working there,” she said. The smoke came from fires lit by farmers, burning the rainforest to convert it to pastureland.
“All I could smell was the fires, and the dust, because it was the dry season—it really was a no-man’s land where you could do anything you wanted,” Gebara said.