After journalist Dom Phillips disappeared in the Amazon, his friends worked together to finish his book

Globe and Mail

03-07-2025

In June, 2022, journalist Dom Phillips set out by boat on a research trip along winding rivers to the Javari Valley, deep in the rain forest of Brazil's western Amazon.
He never came back.
Phillips, who was working on a book about conservation efforts in the region, and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous-affairs expert, were gunned down by fishermen on June 5.
Their murders drew global attention to the destruction of the Amazon and the dangers faced by those who work to protect it. Phillips, 57, a British freelance journalist who wrote for The Guardian, had been based in Brazil for 15 years. On this trip, he was researching illegal fishing and poaching, and the threats posed to isolated Indigenous groups.
Now, with the support of Phillips's widow, a group of fellow journalists have come together to finish his work. How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist's Fatal Quest for Answers was published in June.
The book explores deforestation and degradation in the world's largest rain forest. It delves into the factors causing harms, from cattle ranching to illegal mining, fishing and logging, megaprojects and, more recently, the drug trade. It is also suffused with solutions on how to protect the forest, chiefly among them, by listening to the Indigenous peoples who live in it.
The Amazon rain forest is one of the Earth's greatest biological treasures. It is one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet, hosting more than a tenth of the world's known species. The region plays a key role in mitigating the impacts of climate change, with its ecosystem storing billions of tonnes of carbon in its trees and soil.
It is a crucial environmental story to tell, and a dangerous one. Phillips flagged the risks, over and over again, in his notes. He was well aware of the dangers to himself, and concerned over threats to the people he spoke with.
He travelled widely throughout the region, and his observations are steeped in a wonder for the local environment and the people who live in it.
Like any good journalist, Phillips spoke to people on the ground, with lived experience, on all sides of the conflicts, farmers and fishers, nuns and community leaders, environmental agents and Indigenous peoples, scientists and politicians. The original title of his book was How to Save the Amazon: Ask the People Who Know.
Grief-stricken, his circle of friends wanted something meaningful to come of such horrific, senseless death. They joined together to ensure his work lived on.
Jonathan Watts, The Guardian's global environment editor, was one of them. Together, he and four other colleagues gathered in a WhatsApp group and discussed just how they would do it.
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'I felt a great responsibility to do something for Dom. Also because I knew that could have been me. And in fact, it could have been really any journalist doing stories about environmental defenders or Indigenous people in the Amazon. That risk is always there,' said Watts, who is based in Altamira, Brazil, in an interview.
Watts had known Phillips since 2012, and decided the best way to honour his friend was in finishing his work. Their motto: Even if they killed a journalist, they couldn't silence the story.
This also includes the work of Pereira, 41 – a close friend of Phillips, who co-founded a group of Indigenous forest guardians who monitored the borders of the Javari Valley. Pereira had received many death threats before, and was undaunted.
Police have said the murders were retaliation for Pereira's work to protect the region from illegal activities. In November, they charged the alleged mastermind of the murders, a leader of an armed criminal group, who they believe ordered the killings.
Phillips had left behind a book outline, a hard drive – and notebooks full of his writing, of interviews and observations in the field. The only problem: 'Dom's handwriting was an almost illegible sprawl. ... I think I was sometimes getting 40 per cent,' Watts said. His sister and nieces all helped decipher them, part of the massive, collaborative effort. Other journalists Phillips knew helped edit the work.
The book is told in 10 chapters. Phillips had completed the first three and a half; the rest were finished by other reporters, including Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker and Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum, with each completing a chapter.
Contributors were asked to stick with Phillips's plan as much as possible, and to think of each chapter as a dialogue, through his notes and past conversations with him.
Some of the chapters involved guesswork at his thinking – the journalists retraced his steps and interviewed many of the same people he'd spoken with.
Hewing to what Phillips wanted, they focused on solutions – visiting agro-forestry projects, lands protected by Indigenous groups and a lake, once nearly dead, now teaming with life. In Costa Rica, they looked at successful efforts to regenerate forests and the positive impacts of conservation on its economy.
It is clear Phillips loved the land, and the flora and fauna in it. He encounters hyacinth macaws and white monkeys, palm-sized spiders, pink freshwater dolphins, bathing tapirs, sharp-toothed piranhas and green parrots.
He describes the beauty. A wall of trees 'resplendent in a thousand shades of green'; sunsets 'a cinematic explosion of pink, turquoise and orange'; and the Javari Valley, a territory of 'sinuous rivers and dense forests.'
Completing a book is not the only way to finish the work of investigative journalists who have been killed on the job. The non-profit organization Forbidden Stories, a global network of journalists, takes on investigations if a reporter is killed or imprisoned, and shares them worldwide. One of those is the 'Bruno and Dom Project.'
Around the world, Phillips was one of at least 69 journalists and media workers who were killed in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; in that year, Latin America was the most dangerous region for them.
The book begins and ends, fittingly, with Phillips's last social-media post: a video of a riverbank, with a lush rain forest, and the caption, Amazônia, sua linda. Amazonia, you beauty. His last public words, the book's co-authors note, convey 'the joy of a journalist doing a job he loved in a place he cherished.'