Brazil and Colombia are curbing destruction of Amazon rainforest

Last year, South America lost around 20,000 square kilometres of mature tropical forest—equivalent to an area roughly the size of Wales, or three times the size of the state of Delaware. These swathes of forest host some of the planet’s highest levels of biodiversity. They capture and store carbon more efficiently than any other environment. In one sense, 2023 was merely another step along a grim, familiar path—South America has lost 30% of its primary forest cover since 2001.

But there are reasons for optimism too. Though the loss of 20,000 square kilometres is tragic, it represents a 23% reduction in deforestation on the previous year, when roughly 26,000 square kilometres of forest were destroyed. Brazil and Colombia did the most to curb deforestation, coinciding with their respective pro-environment presidents, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, and Gustavo Petro, taking office. Much more must be done to protect the Amazon, but it is encouraging that political will has made such a big difference in such a short time. Mr Petro and Lula were elected in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

The tree-loss figures are based on a new report by Global Forest Watch, a collaboration between the World Resources Institute, a non-profit in Washington, and researchers based at the University of Maryland. Using images collected by a NASA satellite, researchers map primary tropical forest across the globe on a 30m by 30m scale. By comparing these maps over time they can detect even small areas of tree loss. The data show whether trees were lost to fires, but further analysis is required to determine which tracts of forest are lost to intentional deforestation.

Brazil was the country with the largest decrease in deforestation last year. The country still lost more primary forest than anywhere else in the world—11,000 square kilometres, equivalent to around half the area of New Jersey. But this figure was down 36% from 2022. It is Brazil’s lowest level of deforestation since 2015. Estimates from the country’s National Institute for Space Research also show a significant decrease, of 22% year on year, in the Brazilian Amazon between August 2022 and July 2023.

Much credit goes to Lula. In June he pledged to end deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2030. He promised to reverse many of the anti-environmental measures put in place by his predecessor, Jair Bolsnaro, who slashed funding for Brazil’s environmental agency and fired its bosses.

One part of Lula’s plan is to recognise new indigenous territories in the Amazon, thereby granting them legal protections against illegal miners and loggers. Indigenous land tends to suffer far less deforestation than that which is private. He resurrected the committee that designates these areas, and has been battling a bill put forward by the opposition that would scupper the process. So far only eight new territories have been recognised since January 2023, bringing the total number to 498, but at least 200 more are being processed.

Lula has also boosted law enforcement. Particularly during the Bolsonaro years, environmental crimes were often overlooked. The current president has pledged to open 39 new police bases across the Amazon. New technologies are helping. The Brazilian Federal Police now use daily images collected by Planet, an American satellite firm, and processed by SCCON, a Brazilian tech company, to detect deforestation and track illegal activity in real-time. The programme claims to have resulted in over 140 arrest warrants and led to the collection of more than $3.1bn.

But although Lula’s anti-deforestation campaign has had a strong start, there are some signs that it may be faltering. Ongoing strikes by Brazil’s civil servants are hampering enforcement efforts—data show that environmental fines in some regions halved in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2023. Additionally, after a forceful push to remove illegal gold miners from Yanomami, Brazil’s largest indigenous territory, in early 2023, many have returned. The Brazilian army allegedly scaled back its operations in the area in mid-2023, leaving the environmental protection agency to fend off miners alone.

Mr Petro is the Amazon’s other new champion. According to the Global Forest Watch report, Colombian primary forest loss fell by a massive 49% in 2023, compared with 2022. Instead of losing an area roughly equivalent to 20 Manhattans, it lost around ten—660 square kilometres. Government estimates for the first nine months of 2023 corroborated Global Forest Watch numbers here, too.

When Mr Petro took office he announced a host of new policies to curb deforestation, including paying local people to prevent tree felling. But less-official actors have made a difference too. In May 2022 Estado Mayor Central (EMC), an armed guerrilla group which controls sections of the Amazon, announced that it would enforce its own ban on deforestation. Where Mr Petro offered a carrot, EMC preferred the stick. They announced a fine of 1m Colombian pesos ($250) for every hectare of deforestation. According to Al Jazeera, an EMC spokesperson claims that their motivation is purely environmental, but some see its interest in nature as a bargaining chip for ongoing peace talks with the government. The future of Colombia’s forests is highly dependent on the government’s relationship with emc and other armed groups; deforestation surged after EMC emerged as a new rebel group in 2016.

Internal politics are not the only force behind the reduction in deforestation. Rich countries like Germany, Norway and Britain are increasingly contributing to projects like the Amazon Fund, a $1bn initiative offering financial incentives to South American countries to stop or slow deforestation. Last year the EU’s Deforestation Regulation came into force. By the end of 2024 companies trading in seven different commodities must prove that their goods have not come from recently deforested land. Many private companies are also adopting voluntary measures to ensure they are not complicit in illegal deforestation at any point along their supply chain.

It is not all good news—in Bolivia primary forest loss surged by 27% year-on-year in 2023. The country lost nearly 5,000 square kilometres, the third-largest loss of any tropical country, almost as much as the Democratic Republic of Congo, and far more than Indonesia, despite having less than half the forested area of either. Most of the losses in the country were caused by fires, which are often intentionally set by humans to clear land for agriculture.

Lula and Mr Petro have pushed other South American leaders to adopt more environmentally friendly policies. In August the eight Amazonian nations signed a declaration to end deforestation and prevent the rainforest from reaching a “tipping-point”, a level of destruction beyond which the rainforest cannot sustain itself and starts to degenerate. Preliminary figures for January and February 2024 show further reductions in Amazon deforestation compared to 2023. With luck, it is only the beginning. ■

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Correction (April 17th): An earlier version of this article said that South America lost around 2,000 square kilometres of mature tropical forest last year. The correct figure is 20,000. Sorry