Deforestation in the Amazon

Deforestation in the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest⁹, is falling in Brazil but has not stopped. Brazil's official PRODES system measured 5,731 km² of forest cleared in the Legal Amazon between August 2024 and July 2025, 12% less than the year before¹. Between 1985 and 2023, the Amazon countries lost more than 88 million hectares of forest, about 12.5% of their cover².

How big is the Amazon, and how much has been lost?

The RAISG research network maps Amazonia as about 8.5 million km² across Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana². Brazil's Amazon biome alone covers 421 million hectares, 49.5% of the country³.

The forest lost since 1985 covers an area almost the size of Colombia². In Brazil's part, 52 million hectares of native vegetation are gone, 13% of what stood in 1985³. Much of what remains is damaged: a 2024 review in Nature estimated that 17% of the remaining forest is degraded by logging, fire and edge effects, and up to 38% if repeated droughts are counted¹³.

Is Amazon deforestation going down?

In Brazil, yes. The space agency INPE has measured Amazon deforestation with PRODES since 1988. It counts clear-cuts larger than 6.25 hectares in the nine states of the Legal Amazon, in years that run from August to July⁵.

The recent peak came in 2021, and the rate has fallen every year since. The 2025 figure is 12.07% below 2024. Mato Grosso, a soy and cattle heartland, was the only Legal Amazon state where it rose, by 26.73%¹.

The early signal for 2026 also points down. INPE's DETER system, which flags clearing in near real time for enforcement teams, recorded 2,874 km² of alerts from August 2025 to July 2026, about 36% less than a year earlier and the lowest in its series⁷. Alerts are not the official rate, so the PRODES figure for 2026 may differ. MapBiomas, which checks alerts across the Amazon biome, counted 289,478 hectares cleared in calendar year 2025, down 23.5%⁸.

What is driving deforestation in the Amazon?

Cattle

Cattle come first. MapBiomas tracked what happened to land after clearing: in every year from 1987 to 2022, pasture was the first use of more than 90% of it. Pasture in the Brazilian Amazon grew from about 12.3 million hectares in 1985 to 56.1 million in 2024³. Across Brazil, permanent agriculture, mostly cattle and soy, caused 73% of primary forest loss from 2002 to 2025⁹. See what is causing deforestation for the global picture.

Soy, land grabbing and mining

Soy was once a direct driver, until a traders' pact launched in 2006 largely broke the link (see below)¹⁶. Some clearing is speculation: land grabbers cut public forest and put cattle on it to stake a claim. Mining is spreading fast. Across Amazonia, the area used for mining grew by 1,063% between 1985 and 2023².

Fire and roads

Fire finishes the job. Farmers burn felled trees to clear the ground, and the flames dry out the surrounding forest¹². In 2024, during a record drought, fires caused about two-thirds of Brazil's primary forest loss¹⁰. Roads open the door: nearly 95% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon happened within 5.5 km of a road or 1 km of a river¹¹.

Flying rivers and the tipping point

The Amazon makes much of its own rain. Trees pull water from the soil and breathe it out as vapor, and air crossing the basin from the Atlantic drops that moisture as rain and picks it up again. Lovejoy and Nobre summarized evidence that the forest generates about half of its own rainfall by recycling moisture five to six times¹². These airborne streams, often called "flying rivers", reach far beyond the forest, supplying moisture to the Pantanal wetlands and the La Plata basin¹³.

Clear enough forest and the rain machine weakens. In 2018, Lovejoy and Nobre argued that deforestation, warming and fire together could tip eastern, southern and central Amazonia toward non-forest ecosystems at 20–25% deforestation¹². A 2024 Nature review led by Bernardo Flores estimated that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazonian forests will face combined stresses that may trigger unexpected transitions. It proposed keeping deforestation below 10% of the original forest, and warming at 1.5 °C, as a safe boundary. The biome has already lost about 13%¹³.

Indigenous territories and what has worked

Indigenous lands are among the best-protected forests in Amazonia. Between 1985 and 2023, only 6.5% of the natural vegetation lost across the region was inside Indigenous territories and protected areas². Near roads and rivers, 10.9% of protected land had been cleared, against 43.6% of unprotected land¹¹.

Enforcement works when it is used. Brazil launched its Amazon action plan, PPCDAm, in 2004, and deforestation fell from 27,772 km² that year to 4,571 km² in 2012. Research credits the plan's policies, not only falling crop prices¹⁴. Relaunched under President Lula, the plan now covers all biomes, and the federal environment agency IBAMA issued 81% more violation notices in 2023–2025 than in 2020–2022⁹.

Supply chains can help. Under the Amazon Soy Moratorium, launched in 2006, traders agreed not to buy soy grown on Amazon land cleared after July 2008¹⁶. Before the pact, about 30% of soy expansion in the Amazon came through deforestation. Afterward, about 1% did¹⁵.

That safeguard is now coming apart. Several states removed tax incentives for companies in the pact, and major traders said in early 2026 that they would leave it⁹. In August 2026, Brazil's Supreme Court found the pact constitutional but upheld state laws that take tax benefits away from those who follow it¹⁶. See solutions to deforestation and the latest deforestation statistics.

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