Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon slows to lowest level in six years

South America's biggest country lost 985,000 hectares of native vegetation in 2025 – down 20.6 percent from the previous year, monitoring network MapBiomas announced on Wednesday.

The figure was the lowest since the network began keeping records in 2019.

Deforestation in the Amazon alone fell by 23.5 percent, while reductions were recorded across Brazil's six major ecosystems.

The figures are good news for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is seeking a fourth term in October elections after making the fight against deforestation one of the central goals of his administration.

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Tougher enforcement

Preserving forest cover is considered important in tackling climate change because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Illegal logging surged during the presidency of far-right former leader Jair Bolsonaro. Lula has pledged to eradicate illegal deforestation completely by 2030.

“We are seeing an increase in enforcement actions and sanctions (...) which have a direct correlation with the drop in deforestation in all Brazilian biomes,” MapBiomas technical coordinator Marcos Rosa told the French news agency AFP.

Official data from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, known as INPE, has also shown deforestation declining since Lula returned to office in 2023.

The MapBiomas figures do not include forest lost to fires. After a record fire season in 2024, Brazil was relatively spared major infernos in 2025.

“In the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, where deforestation slowed by 23.5 percent, five trees are still felled every second,” the monitoring network said.

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Pressure on the Cerrado

The hardest-hit biome in 2025 was once again the Cerrado, a vast and biodiverse savanna south of the Amazon.

More than half of all vegetation loss recorded in Brazil last year took place in the Cerrado, MapBiomas said.

Agriculture accounted for 99 percent of vegetation loss across the country, according to the consortium of universities, non-governmental organisations and technology companies that tracks land-use changes in Brazil.

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Election backdrop

Environmental policy is expected to remain a major issue ahead of Brazil's presidential election campaign.

Lula hosted the Cop30 climate summit in the Amazonian city of Belem in 2025 as part of efforts to present Brazil as a leader on environmental protection.

The summit placed global attention on rainforest protection and efforts to end deforestation, with Brazil promoting new international forest protection initiatives during the talks.

Criticism from environmental groups has nevertheless continued over the government's support for a major oil exploration project near the mouth of the Amazon River.

(with AFP)