Deforested area in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil 2004-2020

In 2020, the deforestation rate of the Legal Amazon region in Brazil reached the highest level in over a decade. It was estimated that almost 11 thousand square kilometers were destroyed that year, up from 10.1 thousand square kilometers a year earlier, the two highest figures reported since 2008. The Legal Amazon is an area of more than five million square kilometers comprising nine Brazilian states.

What is behind the growing Amazon deforestation in Brazil?

Illegal logging, expansion of agricultural areas for soybean cultivation, and an increase in wildfire outbreaks are all among the leading causes of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Politics, however, has also played an important role. Despite promises to slow down the annually deforested area by the end of his term, President Jair Bolsonaro and his government have been heavily criticized for loosening environmental restrictions and constraining the work of regulatory agencies since taking office in 2019. Nevertheless, the problem is not limited to one single administration. For example, the authorized budget for Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment has been on a mostly downward trend since 2013, when it reached a decade-long peak of nearly seven billion Brazilian reals.

How big is the Brazilian deforestation issue?

In 2020, Brazil registered by far the largest area of primary forest loss in the world, amounting to nearly two million hectares. This was roughly the same area as the remaining top nine countries combined. As the country with the second-largest forest area worldwide, these developments are cause for concern amidst the conversation on climate change mitigation. With the global tree cover loss annually increasing, and the emission of greenhouse gases from forest areas along with it, reaching net-zero emissions targets by 2050 grows ever more challenging.