Brazil’s Amazon deforestation rate approaches historic low

Amazon deforestation in Brazil has plunged 37% from a year ago, putting the country on track for what could be its lowest official amount of forest lost since satellite measurements began nearly four decades ago.

Forest destruction fell to 1,110 square miles, an area slightly larger than Luxembourg, in the 12 months through July. That’s the lowest level in the current Deter series, which started in 2015. Deter is a near-real-time, lower-resolution monitoring system designed primarily to guide enforcement and identify areas where land-clearing is occurring. Brazil contains about two-thirds of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest.

The finding suggests that Brazil will officially record its lowest annual Amazon deforestation rate since 1988 later this year. The official figure is typically published in October or November and comes from the Prodes system, which uses higher-resolution analysis. Both the Deter and Prodes systems are managed by the National Institute for Space.

The sharp reduction comes as Brazil faces fresh U.S. pressure over its environmental record. Following a year-long Section 301 investigation, the U.S. Trade Representative concluded in June that some Brazilian practices were “unreasonable or discriminatory” and burdened U.S. commerce, citing illegal deforestation alongside digital trade, tariffs, intellectual-property protection and ethanol market access.

The USTR said Brazil has historically failed to enforce its legal framework effectively against illegal deforestation. A 25% tariff on select Brazilian imports took effect on July 22, but exemptions included beef, by far the largest deforestation driver in the Amazon.

Since the beginning of his third term, in 2023, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has overseen a crackdown on deforestation, following a 15-year-high surge under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump.

Over the three-and-a-half years of Lula’s presidency, the total area of deforestation in the Amazon according to the Deter system came to 19,642 square kilometers, a 41% drop compared with the 2019-2022 period under Bolsonaro’s government, according to an analysis by the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups.