However Brazil's success in curbing deforestation has stalled since 2012 and forest loss has been trending upward since. There is debate over why this is the case, but some researchers argue that Brazil achieved about as much as it could through law enforcement and other punitive measures. Reducing deforestation further requires sufficient economic incentives to maintain forest cover in the Amazon. Put another way, standing forest needs to be made more valuable than clearing it for pasture, crops, or land speculation.

By that line of reasoning, the political impetus for reducing deforestation began to wane as ranchers, farmers, investors, and land speculators grew tried of fines, threats of legal action, and prohibitions against clearing. Political movements like the ruralistas pushed harder for relation of environmental laws and amnesty for past transgressions. These interests gained momentum when the Temer administration came to power in 2016 and won more clout with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in late 2018. Bolsonaro, who campaigned on the promise to open the Amazon to extractive industries and agribusiness while disparaging environmentalists and indigenous peoples, immediately set about dismantling protections for the Amazon when he took office in January 2019. Deforestation increased sharply thereafter, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s. Mongabay-News is tracking the latest deforestation news in the Amazon at its Amazon deforestation news feed.

Deforestation trends in Amazon countries

Forest loss trends between Amazon countries are highly variable. The following charts are based data from Matt Hansen and colleagues, as presented in Global Forest Watch, using a "loose" definition of the Amazon that extends beyond the Amazon river basin. This includes the Guianas, all of Amazonas state in Venezuela, and all of the states of Maranhão and Mato Grosso in Brazil. "Forest" is defined as areas having more than 30% tree cover.

Please note: Amazon deforestation data is updated monthly here.

Brazil

Brazil [news] holds about one-third of the world's remaining rainforests, including more than 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined sharply in the mid-2000s due to government interventions, macroeconomic factors, and efforts by civil society. However in recent years, that decline has stalled, with deforestation beginning to rise again.

The history of dramatic decline in the Brazilian Amazon's deforestation rate is detailed in our environmental profile on the country. For updates on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, check our Brazil deforestation news feed.

Peru

Peru's [news] rate of forest loss has been trending upward over the past decade. Reasons for the rise include the development and completion of the Transoceanic highway, which connects Pacific ports to the heart of the Amazon; a surge in gold mining in Madre de Dios and other regions along the eastern slope of the Andes; and increased logging and hydrocarbon extraction.

Colombia

The rate of forest loss in the Colombian Amazon [news] has been roughly flat since 2000.

Bolivia

Bolivia's [news] deforestation spiked in 2008 and again in 2010. Overall the country's rate of loss has been increasing at the second highest rate in the Amazon.

Ecuador

Ecuador's [news] rate of forest loss in the Amazon increased between 2001 and 2012. One of the top concern for environmentalists is the government's decision to open Yasuni National Park for oil drilling.

Venezuela

Only a part of Amazonas state in Venezuela [news] is considered part of the Amazon rainforest, but for the purpose of this estimate, the entire state is used. Most of Venezuela's rainforest found in areas that are part of the Orinoco river basin. Forest loss in the Venezuelan Amazon has been mostly flat since 2000.

The Guianas

While Suriname [news], Guyana [news], and French Guiana [news] aren't part of the Amazon River basin, their forests are often lumped in as part of the Amazon rainforest. Forest loss in the three countries has sharply increased in recent years.

Direct drivers of deforestation in Amazon countries

Cattle ranching

Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. In Brazil, this has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. Today the figure in Brazil is closer to 70 percent. Most of the beef is destined for urban markets, whereas leather and other cattle products are primarily for export markets.

But production of beef, leather and other cattle products isn't the only reason for converting rainforest into artificial grasslands. In a region where land prices are appreciating quickly, cattle ranching is used as a vehicle for land speculation, much of which is illegal. Forestland has little value—but cleared pastureland can be used to produce cattle or sold to large-scale farmers, including soy planters.

In the mid- to late-2000s, the situation in the Brazilian Amazon began to change. In 2006, major soy crushers established the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which barred the purchase of soy produced on lands deforested in the Amazon biome after July 24, 2006. This historic agreement, which came in response to a Greenpeace campaign, became the basis for zero deforestation commitments established subsequently in other sections, including cattle production. In 2009, major cattle buyers and the Brazilian government established the "Cattle Agreement" which was intended to bar cattle from illegally deforested areas from supply chains as well as prohibit the use of slave labor on ranches. As part of the push to improve the sustainability of cattle, state-run banks began mandating landowners register their properties for environmental compliance in order to gain access to low-interest loans.

Cattle agreements did not emerge in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, where cattle ranching remains a major driver of Amazon forest loss. And by the early 2010s, it became clear that major slaughterhouses in Brazil were evading the safeguards put in place under the agreement by laundering cattle through other ranches. Such activity rendered the cattle agreement far less effective than originally envisioned. As of 2020, cattle ranching remains the dominant cause of deforestation in the Amazon.

Colonization and subsequent subsistence agriculture

Historically, subsistence agriculture has been an important cause of deforestation in the Amazon. Small-scale agriculture has often been facilitated by government colonization programs aiming to alleviate urban population pressure by redistributing or granting rural land to the poor. In some cases these programs have failed to meet their development goals while simultaneously unleashing large-scale deforestation.

For example, in the 1970s, Brazil's military dictatorship expanded its ambitious colonization program centered around the construction of the 2,000-mile Trans-Amazonian Highway, which would bisect the Amazon, opening rainforest lands to (1) settlement by poor farmers from the crowded, drought-plagued north and (2) enabling the exploitation of timber and mineral resources. Under the program, colonists would be granted a 250-acre lot, six-months' salary, and easy access to agricultural loans in exchange for settling along the highway and converting the surrounding rainforest into agricultural land. The plan would grow to cost Brazil US$65,000 (1980 dollars) to settle each family.

The project was plagued from the start. The sediments of the Amazon Basin rendered the highway unstable and subject to inundation during heavy rains, blocking traffic and leaving crops to rot. Harvest yields for poor farmers were dismal due to poor training and inadequate soils, which were quickly exhausted necessitating more forest clearing.. Logging was difficult due to the low density of commercially exploitable trees. Rampant erosion, up to 40 tons of soil per acre (100 tons/ha) occurred after clearing. Many colonists, unfamiliar with banking and lured by easy credit, went deep into debt.

Adding to the debacle was the environmental cost of the project. After the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Brazilian deforestation accelerated to levels never before seen.

While state-sponsored colonization schemes have waned in the 21st century, they haven't disappeared. The Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA) continues to resettle colonists in the Amazon. Additionally, actors in the private sector are known to encourage colonization for the explicit purpose of land-grabbing and deforestation. Speculators may sponsor migrants from Brazilian cities to settle forested areas in the Amazon, sometimes enroaching on farmers' legal forest reserves, indigenous reserves, and national parks and other state lands. Once the squatters — known locally as grileiros — have occupied the land long enough to clear it or secure assert a claim, however tenous, they turn it over their benefactor who sponsored the venture. The grileiros may then be deployed to another tract of forest.

Commercial agriculture

After the commercialization of a new variety of soybean developed by Brazilian scientists to flourish in rainforest climate, soy emerged as one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the 1990s through the mid-2000s.

Soy was both a direct and indirect deforestation. While forest was converted directly for soy fields, the crop's impact on rainforests was much larger, providing an impetus for new highways, driving up land prices and thereby encouraging land speculation, and encouraging ranchers and small farmers to move deeper into rainforest areas.

But the situation in Brazil has changed significantly since 2006, when a high profile campaign by Greenpeace forced Brazil's largest soy producers to commit to avoiding deforestation for new production. However deforestation for soy is still widespread in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Meanwhile other forms of commercial agriculture, including rice, corn, and sugar cane, also contribute to deforestation in the Amazon, both directly through forest conversion and indirectly by driving up land values.

Logging

In theory, logging in the Amazon is controlled by strict licensing which allows timber to be harvested only in designated areas, but in practice, illegal logging remains widespread in Brazil and Peru.

Logging in the Amazon is closely linked with road building. Studies by the Environmental Defense Fund show that areas that have been selectively logged are eight times more likely to be settled and cleared by shifting cultivators than untouched rainforests because of access granted by logging roads. Logging roads give colonists access to remote rainforest areas.

Other causes of forest loss in the Amazon

Historically, hydroelectric projects have flooded vast areas of Amazon rainforest. The Balbina dam flooded some 2,400 square kilometers (920 square miles) of rainforest when it was completed. Today dams drive deforestation by powering industrial mining and farming projects. Hundreds of dams are planned in the Amazon basin over the next 20 years.

Mining has had a substantial impact in the Amazon. High mineral and precious metal prices has spurred unprecedented invasions of rainforest lands across Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Peru. A 2013 study found that the area torn up for small-scale gold mining increased 400 percent in 13 years The surge in the gold price during the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated interested in mining, triggering more encroachment by illegal goldminers ̵ called garimpeiros in Brazil as well as increased investment from commercial and industrial operators.

Oil and gas development is fueling environmental concerns in the Western Amazon. Large blocks of rainforest have been granted for exploration and exploitation licenses in recent years. Oil and gas development is generally not a major direct driver of deforestation — most of the impact comes from the construction of supporting infrastructure like roads and pipelines. But pollution from oil spills, flaring, and intentional dumping of chemical waste drive other environmental problems.

Deforestation monitoring in the Amazon rainforest

This section is excerpted for an story published on Mongabay News: What’s the current deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest?

Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is located in Brazil, making it the biggest component in the region’s deforestation rate. Helpfully, Brazil also has the best systems for tracking deforestation, with the government and Imazon, a national civil society organization, releasing updates on a quarterly and monthly basis using MODIS satellite data, respectively. Both the Brazilian government and Imazon release more accurate data on an annual basis using higher resolution Landsat satellite imagery.

For other Amazon countries — primarily Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia since Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana are mostly outside the true Amazon basin watershed — the most reliable source for regular updates is Global Forest Watch, a platform that aggregates data from a many different sources. Currently Global Forest Watch has FORMA, a near-real-time forest cover monitoring system that also uses MODIS, and annual estimate made by a group of researchers led by a team at the University of Maryland.

Variance in monthly deforestation

Month-to-month deforestation is highly variable leading to frequent misreporting in the media. Both MODIS and Landsat cannot penetrate cloud cover, so during the rainy season — from roughly November to April — estimates are notoriously unreliable when compared to the same month a year earlier. Furthermore, most forest clearing in the Amazon occurs when it is dry. So if the dry season is early, deforestation may increase earlier than normal. For these reasons, the most accurate deforestation comparisons are made year-on-year. For Brazil, the deforestation “year” ends July 31: the peak of the dry season when the largest extent of forest is typically visible via satellite.

Nonetheless, short-term MODIS data isn’t useless — it can provide insights on trends, especially over longer periods of time. Generally, comparing 12 consecutive months of MODIS data will provide a pretty good indication of deforestation relative to other years. Therefore the charts below include a history of MODIS-based data as well as the longer-term Landsat-based data. The MODIS system used by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) is called DETER, while Imazon’s system is called SAD. INPE’s annual Landsat-based system is called PRODES.

Current monthly deforestation data for the Brazilian Amazon

INPE and DETER are used primary for law enforcement since detection occurs on roughly a biweekly basis, enabling environmental police to take action as large-scale forest clearing occurs. As of 2021, INPE releases SAD data every Friday, covering deforestation registered up to about 10 days prior.