Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

When Malaysians voted last year to oust the party that had been in power for six decades,

they wanted change. But after more than a year, the repressive,

illiberal laws that characterized the party's rule are still on the books. We ask why.

And the global rise in tourism takes different tolls in different destinations.

We take a look at how Norway is dealing with one such effect, the growing scourge of fish smuggling.

The Amazon Basin is home to the largest rainforest on earth. It spans 7 million square kilometers

and crosses eight countries in South America. It's key to the global climate and it's a

storehouse of global life. The Amazon is home to about 10 or 15 percent of the world's biodiversity.

Sarah Maslin is our Brazil correspondent based in Sao Paulo. It's been a source of food and

fuel for the people who live on it for millennia and its rain supports agriculture throughout the

whole region of South America. In recent decades, it's become increasingly clear that the Amazon is

also crucial to the entire world. The ability of its trees to store carbon dioxide is one of the most

important protections we have left against global warming. But since the 1970s, nearly a million

square kilometers have been lost to logging, farming, mining, roads, dams and other forms of

development, it's around 17 percent. There was a brief respite for nearly a decade up until 2012

when the rate of deforestation slowed, but today it's again on the rise and the Amazon is approaching

a tipping point. If too much of the rainforest is cut down, it could cause the collapse of the

Amazon as we know it and there would be no going back. This risk is higher than ever. 60 percent of

the rainforest sits within the borders of Brazil and President Jair Bolsonaro is hastening its

destruction. His policies may precipitate an ecological collapse that would be felt far beyond the

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