A recent analysis by Trase highlights the challenges Ivory Coast faces in conforming to the European Union's new anti-deforestation regulation. The study reveals that less than half of the nation's cocoa can be traced back to its source, posing a sig... [802 chars]

The Ivorian cocoa industry struggles to comply with the EU's new anti-deforestation law, needing to trace its cocoa origins more accurately. Only 48% of exports can currently be traced to specific farms, complicating efforts to mitigate deforestation. Ivory Coast adopted a digital system to improve traceability.

Devdiscourse

Tracing Cocoa Origins: Ivory Coast's Challenge with New EU Law

LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivory Coast cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming anti-deforestation... [2081 chars]

The amount of Ivory Coast cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's...

MarketScreener

Ivory Coast cocoa traceability rates fail to improve as EU anti-deforestation law looms

LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivorian cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into ​question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming ‌anti-deforestation l... [2469 chars]

The amount of Ivorian cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into ​question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming ‌anti-deforestation law, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday by the non-profit Trase.

Reuters

The Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has less than half of its cocoa exports for 2024 traceable to their origins, raising concerns about meeting the EU's new anti-deforestation standards. The non-profit Trase has highlighted issues with t... [668 chars]

The Ivory Coast, a major cocoa producer, faces challenges in complying with the EU's anti-deforestation law, as less than half of its cocoa can be traced back to its origin. Trase reports the persistent issue of indirect supplies, complicating visibility and compliance with environmental regulations.

Ivory Coast's Cocoa Challenge: Tracing Roots to Combat Deforestation

A technology designed to mitigate global warming could, paradoxically, contribute to carbon emissions if hotter temperatures lead to a shift in where bioenergy crops are grown. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) involves combusting or ... [776 chars]

A technology designed to mitigate global warming could, paradoxically, contribute to carbon emissions if hotter temperatures lead to a shift in where bioenergy crops are grown. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) involves combusting or fermenting biological materials to produce energy while capturing the carbon dioxide emitted by the process and storing it underground. BECCS could help mitigate climate change, and many models of a net-zero emissions future assume widespread use of the technology. However, first generation bioenergy production requires substantial land area to grow the crops used as feedstocks.

Phys.org

Carbon-capture technology could trigger the deforestation it was designed to prevent

When Xing Yanling posted on WeChat about ⁠her visit to the Brazilian Amazon in April, she described to her friends in China the unforgettable sensation of being "enveloped by tens of thousands of shades of green.”
Xing is no ordinary tourist. She lea... [536 chars]

A pledge from a meat association in Tianjin to buy deforestation-free beef is challenging a long-held assumption among Brazilian farmers that China cares only about price.

The Japan Times 

How China's evolving consumer habits may protect the Amazon rainforest

Thane: Once known for its lush green hills, dense forests, cool climate and abundant natural water resources, Shahapur taluka in Thane district is now staring at an alarming environmental crisis. The mercury touching nearly 46 degrees Celsius this su... [3799 chars]

Environmental activists have warned that unchecked deforestation, hill excavation and forest fires could turn Shahapur into a “furnace zone” as temperatures touched nearly 46°C this summer. The Environmental Protection Forum has sought urgent government intervention, demanding eco-sensitive zone status and stricter conservation measures for the region.

Free Press Journal

Shahapur Taluka Faces 46°C Heat & Ecological Collapse; Activists Seek Eco-Sensitive Zone Status

When ​Xing Yanling posted on WeChat about her visit to the Brazilian Amazon in April, she described to her friends in China the unforgettable sensation of being “enveloped by tens ​of thousands of shades of green.” Xing is no ordinary tourist. She le... [7378 chars]

She leads the Tianjin Meat Industry Association, representing ‌importers responsible for around ​40% of China's beef purchases from Brazil. Under her leadership, Tianjin’s members have committed to buying 50,000 metric tons of deforestation-free certified Brazilian beef by the end of the year, in what may be an early sign that China, one of the most powerful forces in global commodity trade, is willing to pay more for greener supply chains.

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released i... [7860 chars]

The Amazon plays a crucial part in regulating the global climate by storing carbon dioxide.

Santa Ana Orange County Register

Despite gains combating deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon, forest degradation is a looming threat

Boulder Daily Camera

Govt optimistic to achieve reduction in deforestation by 2030
Related news: West Papua stresses indigenous approval for palm oil expansion
Kuningan, W. Java (ANTARA) - Indonesian Ministry of Forestry is optimistic about achieving target of reduction in deforestation as outlined in Indonesia's FOLU Net Sink 2030 and the Second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)."We remain optimistic that the target in the Second NDC will be achieved by 2030. All instruments in the ministry are being deployed to ensure that the proceed of restoration and maintenance for forest cover goes well as planned," the ministry's project manager for FOLU NC 2&3, Arga Paradita Sutiyono, said during a discussion at Mount Ciremai National Park in West Java on Monday (May 11).He highlighted the main challenge leading up to 2030 lies in controlling deforestation and forest degradation. Meanwhile, the ministry's vision is to ensure the deforestation rate is lower than the baseline of 0.31 million hectares per year."We are targeting to reduce the figure to 0.3 or 0.2 million hectares by 2030," Arga Sutiyono stated.He also acknowledged an increase in deforestation at the first quarter of 2026 reaching to 0.37 million hectares, up from 0.31 million hectares in the 2024-2025 period.However, he emphasized this increase was not caused by massive land clearing, but rather was influenced by forest fires and other natural factors.The government is also implementing the net deforestation concept, where logging in plantation forests is not considered deforestation as long as replanting takes place.Therefore, achieving the FOLU Net Sink target is considered not merely a project program, but also has become the mainstream of every activity funded by the State Budget at the ministry.
Translator: M. Riezko Bima Elko Prasetyo, Yashinta Difa
Editor: Fransiska Ninditya
Copyright © ANTARA 2026

Indonesian Ministry of Forestry is optimistic about achieving target of reduction in deforestation as outlined in Indonesia's FOLU Net Sink 2030 and the ...

Govt optimistic to achieve reduction in deforestation by 2030

Protected areas are vital for safeguarding biodiversity, ensuring water quality, and mitigating carbon emissions. However, despite their recognized importance, their specific role in the climate system at different spatial scales across South America, in the context of ongoing Amazonian deforestation, remains poorly understood. Therefore, the hypothesis that 'Amazonian protected areas mitigate the impacts of deforestation at different spatial scales in South America' is formulated. The Eta regional climate model was used to evaluate the mitigation role and fragility of Amazonian protected areas (Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units) in the face of deforestation projected to 2050. Precipitation and temperature, among other complementary variables, were evaluated in tropical and subtropical South America. The results of this study clearly demonstrate the mitigating role of Amazonian protected areas on climate at local, regional, and continental scales. In the presence of deforestation in the Amazon, the intact forest cover inside protected areas has a beneficial impact on both temperature and precipitation at a regional scale, including on deforested non-protected lands near these legally protected spaces. At a local scale, there is also a beneficial effect on temperature, while at a continental scale, there is a beneficial effect on precipitation. However, even inside well-preserved protected areas, the results showed a reduction of precipitation due to deforestation in neighboring non-protected areas. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of protected areas in the Amazon region to the climate of South America, and also considers it important to curb deforestation in non-protected areas of the Amazon.
Graphical Abstract
The Eta regional climate model was used to assess the importance of Amazonian protected areas on the climate of South America. Future deforestation scenarios projected for 2050, with and without forest cover preserved within Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units in the Brazilian Amazon, were simulated. The results show a mitigating role of Amazonian protected areas on climate at local, regional, and continental scales. In other words, the well-preserved protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon have a mitigation effect on rainfall and temperature in this region. There is also a mitigation effect on rainfall over the subtropical region of South America. Within Amazonian protected areas, intact forest cover mitigates the temperature impacts of deforestation in neighboring non-protected areas, but rainfall within these legally protected spaces is negatively affected. This study emphasizes the importance of protected areas in the Amazon region for the climate of South America, while also stressing the need to curb deforestation in unprotected areas of this biome.

Protected areas are vital for safeguarding biodiversity, ensuring water quality, and mitigating carbon emissions. However, despite their recognized importance, their specific role in the climate…

Climate Resilience Beyond Borders: The Role of Amazonian Protected Areas in South America - Earth Systems and Environment

Meat and dairy production are significant drivers of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Many companies claim to be tackling this, but nearly all these claims, 98%, could be considered greenwashing, a recent study found.
Researchers logged more than 1,200 environmental commitments made by 33 of the sector's largest companies between 2021 and 2024. They found a pattern of 'deceptive' information about environment strategies, goals and actions that 'can create the illusion of progress,' lead author Maya Bach, an environmental science and policy researcher at the University of Miami in the U.S., said in a statement.
At least 16.5% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, including from deforestation, come from meat and dairy production. More than one-third of all environmental claims, 467 in total, include vague climate goals such as emissions reduction and net-zero targets. Yet these promises were found to lack plans for implementation and were rarely evaluated for practicality, the study's authors wrote.
They categorized each commitment by the type of greenwashing, including selective disclosure, vagueness, empty claims, and no proof. They quoted the companies' own sustainability claims and analyzed them for greenwashing.
For example, in 2023, commodity-trading giant Cargill wrote in its sustainability report that it would 'eliminate deforestation and land conversion from direct and indirect supply chain of key row crops in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay by 2025.'
In 2024, Mongabay reported that Cargill had pushed its baseline year for evaluating deforestation ahead by 12 years. Its original cutoff year, 2008, aligned with Brazil's soy moratorium. However, its 2024 sustainability report moved this to 2020, the cutoff date for the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the EU's antideforestation law, expected to take effect at the end of this year.
That change allowed Cargill to claim that 99.3% of its soy, rather than 94% under the 2008 baseline, was grown on deforestation-free land — without changing anything about where it gets its soy from.
Other companies employed vague and selective wording. Minerva Foods, one of the Brazil-based meatpackers responsible for huge amounts of deforestation, said it would 'aim for zero illegal deforestation throughout the South American supply chain by 2030.'
Danone, one of the world's largest dairy companies, promised in 2023 that it would have 'no deforestation across its primary deforestation-linked commodities' by 2025. Researchers pointed out there was 'no proof' it had done so, and that it was 'unclear how this will be measured or independently verified.'
In 2024, in preparation for the implementation of the EUDR, Danone had more difficulty than its competitors in tracing its suppliers.
'When so much of what these companies say seem to be empty promises that are not backed up with evidence or investments, it starts to look more like a public relations exercise rather than caring for the planet,' said co-author Jennifer Jacquet, an environmental scientist at the University of Miami.
Banner image: Cattle ranching in Serra de Ricardo Franco State Park, Brazil. Image © Ednilson Aguiar/Greenpeace.

Meat and dairy production are significant drivers of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Many companies claim to be tackling this, but nearly all these claims, 98%, could be considered greenwashing, a recent study found. Researchers logged more than 1,200 environmental commitments made by 33 of the sector's largest companies between 2021 and 2024. They found […]

Nearly all climate claims by meat and dairy firms amount to greenwashing: Study

Despite gains combating deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, forest degradation is a looming threat (Photo credit: AP)
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
SAO PAULO: The administration of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon , and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires."Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition," said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.While the Amazon is still a carbon sink - that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide - it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse.A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk - more than 60% - meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation - complete clear-cutting - and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.If approved, the project would be "a major environmental setback," Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. "In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition."Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures."The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April," said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state."The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did," she added.In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions - and time - to germinate and grow."The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently," Maracahipes said. "And it has to be now."

Environment News: Despite a significant decrease in deforestation rates in Brazil's Amazon, forest degradation poses an alarming new threat that could destabilize the ecosystem. Experts warn that…

Amazon: Brazil's Amazon Faces New Threats: Rising Forest Degradation Amidst Deforestation Success

COP30 roadmap to end deforestation will invite countries to draft domestic plans – Image for illustrative purposes only (Image credits: Unsplash)
New York – Experts advising Brazil's COP30 presidency presented the first outline of a global roadmap this week that will ask countries to develop their own voluntary national plans to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. The approach emerged after earlier efforts to create binding global targets stalled. It draws on more than 130 submissions from governments and specialists gathered during recent consultations. The final document is scheduled for release by September.
From Stalled Global Targets to Flexible National Pathways
At COP28 in Dubai, nearly every country endorsed goals to end deforestation and shift away from fossil fuels by 2030. Progress on turning those pledges into action has remained limited. Brazil's COP30 team therefore chose to prepare two non-binding roadmaps as a practical bridge. One covers deforestation; the other addresses the fossil-fuel transition.
The deforestation version will not impose a single blueprint. Instead, it will encourage each nation to translate its existing 2030 commitments into concrete steps suited to local conditions. Juliano Assunção, an advisor to the COP30 presidency, told delegates at the United Nations Forum on Forests that the document 'will not prescribe a single model' but will help countries ground their plans in regional and national analysis.
What the Roadmap Will Actually Contain
The report is expected to have two main sections. The first will examine the social, economic, and environmental risks of continued forest loss. The second will present a menu of proven policy options drawn from real country experiences. Officials stressed that the guidance will remain practical and will highlight how drivers of deforestation differ sharply from one region to another.
International cooperation will also feature prominently. Countries requested help sharing satellite monitoring tools, improving forest finance mechanisms, and aligning trade and anti-crime rules to protect forests. The roadmap will include a dedicated subsection on these cross-border opportunities.
Forest Nations Stress Local Realities and Funding
Delegates from major rainforest countries welcomed the initiative but urged that it address everyday pressures on the ground. In the Congo Basin, for example, deforestation often stems from poverty-driven activities such as collecting firewood or small-scale farming rather than large industrial projects. Indonesia's representative noted the need to untangle complex links between land-use decisions, economic demands, and development priorities.
Finance emerged as a recurring concern. Guyana's ambassador highlighted two approaches already backed by 34 countries: a new Tropical Forest Forever Facility and high-integrity jurisdictional carbon markets. Both, she said, could channel resources to nations with varying forest profiles, including those that have kept deforestation rates low through sustainable management.
Next Steps Before September Release
The COP30 team will continue bilateral talks to refine the text and reflect a broad range of views. While a dedicated coalition similar to the one formed for fossil-fuel phase-out is not planned, officials expect the deforestation roadmap to stand on its own. The document will remain voluntary, yet its authors hope the practical menu of options will help countries move from pledges to measurable results by the 2030 deadline.

COP30 roadmap to end deforestation will invite countries to draft domestic plans – Image for illustrative purposes only (Image credits: Unsplash) New York

COP30 Deforestation Roadmap Puts Focus on Country-Led Strategies

Carbon credits bought by companies to offset their emissions really have reduced deforestation, but not by as much as credit developers claim, according to a rigorous analysis
a briefing about climate change and felt guilty that his company was building a coal-fired power plant in Connecticut. The company eventuallyto plant trees for timber in Guatemala so farmers would stop cutting down intact forest, in theory compensating for the coal plant's carbon emissions .
The idea would develop into markets that allow companies to offset their emissions by buying 'voluntary' carbon credits that help avoid deforestation, among other measures. Advocates say land users should be paid to leave a forest standing. Critics say maybe the land users weren't going to cut down the forest anyway.found that most early projects did successfully reduce deforestation.
But they sold credits for almost 11 times more forest on average than they actually saved.global warming by about 1°C. But they are mainly in lower-income countries that are rapidly clearing trees to expand agriculture like cattle ranching and palm oil plantations.at the University of Cambridge, who led the study.
'Carbon finance is one of the best of a bad set of options for protecting forests. 'in 2025, more than 40,000 square kilometres of trees were still cut or burned. A gap of $216 billion per year of additional financing must be, an investment fund that will pay its returns to countries for each hectare of forest they leave standing. But only $6.6 billion has been donated towards its $125 billion goal.
Carbon credits have been failing to live up to their promise as an answer to the shortfall in government funding. A 2023and SourceMaterial found that 90 per cent of rainforest credits issued by the largest credit certifier were largely worthless.
As a result of that and other research, the market value of voluntary creditswere developed in the 2010s. Thirty-six of them resulted in at least slightly less deforestation than would have been expected if the project didn't exist, and only one resulted in significantly more deforestation. At the same time, only about 1/11th of the credits were justified. But that average was inflated by the eight projects that didn't reduce deforestation, which also issued the largest number of credits.
Excluding the nine top credit sellers, about one-quarter of credits were legitimate. The over-crediting was largely caused by two main errors, which may have been unintentional, says Swinfield. To estimate how much forest in a project area would have been cut down if it hadn't been protected, credit developers looked at how much had already been chopped down in a similar, unprotected 'reference area'. They then modelled how much more deforestation might occur in the future on top of this.
But developers selected reference areas that were more exposed to deforestation because they were closer to a road or on gentler terrain. And they tended to pick the worst-case scenario for future deforestation, rather than a more likely middle-of-the-road one. The study cited a project in the Amazon rainforest in Peru designed to create an alternative income source to slash-and-burn agriculture for 18 local communities.
The French company that developed it selected a patch of rainforest around the project area as the reference area. But this reference area was on average lower, less steep, less heavily forested and about half as far from the nearest road, meaning it was likely to suffer greater deforestation than the project area in any case.
'Many of these projects may have been good, but the methods used to work out how much credit should have been generated were often bad,' says Swinfield. If developers, credit certifiers and ratings agencies hold projects to the more accurate methodology outlined in the research, it would cut down on over-crediting. But it would also increase the price of carbon credits, since there would be fewer credits, and development costs would be higher.
So companies should also pay more for carbon credits if they want to claim to have net-zero emissions, says Swinfield's collaborator 'The era of companies being able to offset their carbon emissions by buying really cheap emissions that claim to slow deforestation in poor countries, I think that is over,' she says.
'You can't deliver equitable and effective forest conservation for a low price. 'An avoided deforestation credit, which is supposed to represent 1 tonne of avoided CO2 emissions, can still be purchased for as little as a few dollars. From high-quality projects, it can cost tens of dollars.
Meanwhile, a different type of credit for actively removing carbon from the atmosphere, either through tree planting or novel techniques like 'There needs to be a market for high-quality carbon credits that genuinely do what they say on the tin in terms of avoided deforestation,' says Jones.at the University of Pennsylvania. That's because companies are buying them to offset rather than actually reduce their emissions.
If they truly wanted to help forests and the climate, they would buy high-quality credits and not 'retire' them against their emissions budget, says Cullenward. Or they would simply donate funds to forest conservation. Either way, it is important to quantify deforestation risk more accurately.
'We need to protect tropical forests, and if we know how to measure impact, we can pay for and quantify those benefits without making an offsetting claim,' he says. 'We can do so with or without carbon credits. '

Carbon credits bought by companies to offset their emissions really have reduced deforestation, but not by as much as credit developers claim, according to a rigorous analysis

Carbon credits are flawed, but they can still help save forests

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that "tipping point" arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.
This presents a conundrum for the expansion of Amazonian agriculture, which has cleared about a fifth of the region's forests in the past 50 years but also depends on consistent rainfall. In the context of climate change, the authors write, deforestation limits once thought sufficient to maintain hydrological stability may no longer be enough. Warming is predicted to make the Amazon drier.
"The way I see this is like the snake eating its own tail," said Eduardo Maeda, an Earth system scientist at the University of Helsinki and senior author on the study. "Our results demonstrate to producers in the south of the Amazon that their activities are impacting their profits and their future."
The study appears in Geophysical Research Letters.
For rainforests, size matters
Currently, Maeda said, laws prohibit landowners in Amazon forest areas from deforesting more than 20% of their land. "That is not enough," he said. "We need to do more." In a worst-case warming scenario, his team estimates, maintaining current annual rainfall in areas larger than 210 square kilometers would require limiting deforestation to no more than 10% of that area.
Doing so would not only conserve the Amazon's biodiversity and carbon-sequestering capacity and help prevent wildfires, all of which take cues from rain and temperature — it would also protect the agricultural livelihoods driving deforestation in the first place. If annual rainfall fell even 4%, it could cut Amazonian soybean yields by up to 8%.
Those consequences owe to the delicate relationship between forests and rain, which doesn't follow the same playbook in every instance. In small doses, deforestation can actually bring more rain.
Clearing trees from a patch of land makes the air hotter, Maeda explained. That heat, rising, pumps moisture emitted from the surrounding forest into the sky over the deforested area, where it condenses and falls as rain.
Clear a massive swath, however, and you'll get the opposite: if not enough forest remains to supply moisture, rainfall over the deforested area will decline.
"[Different] sizes of deforested area affect rainfall differently," Maeda said. "If you deforest 80% of a small farm, but it's surrounded by forest, it's not a big deal. But if you deforest 80% of the whole state, then it will have a huge [impact]."
What remained uncertain, however, was how climate change might alter the link between deforestation and rainfall in the future. To find out, the authors used a weather simulation model to estimate the effects of different climate change and deforestation scenarios on rainfall.
They focused their analysis on a hotspot of agricultural growth in the southern Amazon where forest cover continues to dwindle while croplands and pasturelands expand.
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Saving the rain
In all land area sizes the team considered, climate change caused rainfall to become more sensitive to deforestation. In a 90-by-90-kilometer area fixed at the climate conditions of 2005 to 2014, for instance, they found that rainfall starts to decline once half the land has no forest. In this case, projected deforestation by 2050 cuts annual rainfall by 1.7%.
Add the warming of a low-emissions future into the mix, however, and things start drying up once 45% of the land lies bare, with up to almost 14% less rainfall by 2050. In a high-emissions scenario, only 10% of the land need be treeless before annual rainfall starts to dwindle, potentially declining to almost 11% by mid-century.
"As climate changes in the region, we expect the air to become warmer and drier. The moisture we had before that could be recycled [as] rainfall starts to become less and less," Maeda explained.
With less moisture available to begin with, cutting down the trees that pump that moisture into the sky to become rain takes an additional toll. Even the initial rainfall boost from small-scale deforestation gets weaker as climate change progresses, the team wrote.
"We now have strong arguments to show that we need to increase [forest] protection," Maeda said. "Producers need to understand the ecosystems that are supporting their activities, and to learn how to preserve them so all of us can benefit from [them]."
Protecting the rain in a changing climate might involve alternative approaches to agriculture, such as agroforestry systems that intersperse native trees among the crops to minimize rainfall loss and heat buildup.
"We already have a lot of deforested areas, so the argument is that we don't need any more," Maeda said. "We just need to make these areas more productive and to produce things in a way that is better integrated into the ecosystem."
Publication details
Climate change amplifies rainfall sensitivity to deforestation in the Southern Amazon, Geophysical Research Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1029/2025GL119000
Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters

Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that "tipping point" arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.

Deforestation lessens Amazon rainfall—and climate change hastens that process, study finds

LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivorian cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into ​question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming ‌anti-deforestation law, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday by the non-profit Trase.
From December the law will require that EU importers of commodities and related goods prove their products weren't grown on deforested land by, among other measures, tracing their raw ​materials back to the plot on which they were grown.
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According to Trase, only 48% of Ivory ​Coast's 2024 cocoa exports can be traced back to the farming cooperatives that grew ⁠the beans, largely because the rest of the supply chain is "indirect" or composed of several intermediaries.
The figures ​have not changed much since the non-profit's prior analysis published two years ago.
"The prevalence of indirect supplies of ​cocoa and the resulting lack of visibility into its origins makes it very difficult for companies to address issues such as deforestation or child labour," said UK-based Trase, which maps the international trade and financing of agricultural commodities using publicly available ​data.
Ivory Coast's cocoa regulator did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In order to help ​meet the EU regulations, the country has opted for a digitalised sales and purchasing system that also facilitates verification.
LIMITED AMOUNT OF ‌FOREST REMAINS
The ⁠European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been hailed as a landmark in the fight against climate change but Brussels, which has twice delayed implementing the law, remains under pressure to delay it further and scale it back.
EU trade partners, including Brazil, Indonesia and, crucially, the U.S., say complying with the law is cumbersome and costly. ​As part of its ​trade deal with U.S. ⁠President Donald Trump, the EU committed to working to address U.S. concerns over the law.
Ivory Coast grows just over a third of the world's cocoa and the ​EU is its largest trading partner, importing 66% of the country's beans.
Between 2000 ​and 2024, 79% ⁠of the West African nation's forests were lost or degraded, according to Trase, with cocoa expansion accounting for nearly half of forest loss during much of the period.
"Although overall rates of deforestation in Côte d'Ivoire have declined ⁠over the ​last decade, this is partly due to the limited amount ​of forest remaining," said the non-profit, referring to the country by its French name.
Deforestation is the second-leading cause of climate change after the ​burning of fossil fuels.
Graphic showing rate of deforestation in Ivory Coast since 2000
Reporting by May Angel Editing by Keith Weir and Aurora Ellis
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The Paris Agreement's 1.5°C warming limit was designed partly with ecosystems like the Amazon in mind.
Keep warming under that mark – the thinking went – and the forest had enough stability to weather what was coming.
A new study puts a precise asterisk on that protection.
With forest clearing just a few percentage points higher than today, the 1.5°C boundary no longer acts as a safety net – it sits in the middle of a danger zone.
The research was led by Nico Wunderling, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (
The role of deforestation
Without deforestation, the model puts the danger threshold for warming alone at around 3.7 to 4°C.
That's the range where large stretches of the
Once deforestation joins the math, that cushion shrinks sharply.
'Deforestation makes the Amazon far less resilient than we previously anticipated,' said Wunderling, lead author of the study.
The model suggests that combining 22 to 28 percent forest loss with global warming of 1.5 to 1.9°C could push 62 to 77 percent of the basin toward degraded forest or savannah-like land.
About 17 to 18 percent of the rainforest is already gone. Warming continues to climb. Both numbers are now tracking toward that danger zone.
Trees that produce rain
The Amazon waters itself. Trees pull moisture from deep soil and breathe it out as vapor. That vapor drifts up, condenses, and falls again as rain somewhere else in the basin.
As much as half of the rainforest's precipitation comes from this
Pull out the trees and the loop weakens. Less vapor means less rain. The forest that's still standing gets pushed steadily closer to its drought limit.
A 2023
Drying spreads downwind
What sets the new model apart is geography. The team mapped how moisture actually travels from one stretch of forest to another.
When trees in the eastern Amazon disappear, the drying effect can spread far beyond the cleared land.
Study co-author Arie Staal, an assistant professor at
In the simulations, 88 percent of forest die-off without deforestation came from these chain reactions rather than local drought. Add deforestation, and the figure climbed to 99 percent.
Previous
Regions that face the greatest risk
Most of the existing forest loss runs along a curve through the southern and eastern edges of the basin – the so-called
arc.
The study finds the location is unfortunate. Trade winds blow east to west across the Amazon, so trees cleared in the east stop sending moisture westward.
That creates the downwind cascade the model picks up.
Western and southwestern Amazon, which receive the most forest-generated rainfall, face the highest risk even when those areas remain mostly intact themselves.
A cascade of impacts
The team ran scenarios using a moisture-tracking model fed by detailed climate projections, processing more than a billion simulated water parcels across the Amazon basin.
Two thresholds together mark the danger zone: average annual rainfall dropping below about 73 inches, and dry-season water shortfalls past roughly 9 inches.
Without deforestation, those conditions only show up above 3.7°C. Add deforestation, and they appear far earlier.
Wetter regions can hold the line – but only briefly. Once a single patch flips, neighbors downwind tend to follow.
Recovery that could take centuries
The analysis relies on a single climate dataset and doesn't simulate fire directly – a limitation that likely makes the projected timelines conservative rather than alarmist.
The deforestation scenario used to stress-test the results predate 2013 and may not fully reflect current land-use trends, though the team ran multiple sensitivity checks showing the core findings held.
According to Wunderling's team, the findings are more than a warning.
Forests can grow back. Moisture recycling returns relatively quickly when trees return – faster than biodiversity, which can take centuries to rebuild.
A pledge to end deforestation
Brazilian and other South American governments have pledged to end Amazon deforestation by 2030.
The country has also committed to restoring about 30 million acres of cleared land in the Arc of Restoration.
A 2022
A tipping point that can still be avoided
Earlier modeling has tended to treat warming and deforestation as largely separate forces acting on the Amazon, each operating on its own threshold.
The new modeling collapses that distinction. Each pressure multiplies the other, and the combined ceiling lands much lower than either factor alone implies.
That redraws what 'safe' warming looks like for the rainforest. With current forest-loss rates, even 1.5°C – the Paris Agreement target – may not provide enough margin.
Slowing emissions still help, but not enough. Stopping forest loss and restoring cleared land become equally critical to avoiding the basin-wide collapse the model projects.
Johan Rockström, director of PIK and a co-author of the study, said continued deforestation is pushing the Amazon closer to an irreversible tipping point, though he emphasized that the outcome can still be avoided.
The study is published in the journal
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The Amazon rainforest may be far closer to collapse than previously thought, according to a new study of deforestation.

Amazon rainforest may collapse even if warming stays below 1.5°C

Carbon credits bought by companies to offset their emissions really have reduced deforestation, but not by as much as credit developers claim, according to a rigorous analysis
A logging yard in the Amazon rainforestIn 1986, an energy CEO heard a briefing about climate change and felt guilty that his company was building a coal-fired power plant in Connecticut. The company eventually paid to plant trees for timber in Guatemala so farmers would stop cutting down intact forest, in theory compensating for the coal plant's carbon emissions.
The idea would develop into markets that allow companies to offset their emissions by buying 'voluntary' carbon credits that help avoid deforestation, among other measures. Advocates say land users should be paid to leave a forest standing. Critics say maybe the land users weren't going to cut down the forest anyway.
So who's right? Both, according to a growing body of research. Last month, one of the most rigorous studies yet found that most early projects did successfully reduce deforestation. But they sold credits for almost 11 times more forest on average than they actually saved.
Historically, forests have absorbed about half of humanity's fossil fuel emissions, and tropical forests are particularly important, holding back global warming by about 1°C. But they are mainly in lower-income countries that are rapidly clearing trees to expand agriculture like cattle ranching and palm oil plantations.
'Forests are seriously under threat, and they do need financial mechanisms that can pay for them,' says Tom Swinfield at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. 'Carbon finance is one of the best of a bad set of options for protecting forests.'
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Although tropical forest loss slowed in 2025, more than 40,000 square kilometres of trees were still cut or burned. A gap of $216 billion per year of additional financing must be filled to achieve a global goal of halting deforestation by 2030.
Before the COP30 climate summit last November, Brazil launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, an investment fund that will pay its returns to countries for each hectare of forest they leave standing. But only $6.6 billion has been donated towards its $125 billion goal.
Carbon credits have been failing to live up to their promise as an answer to the shortfall in government funding. A 2023 investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial found that 90 per cent of rainforest credits issued by the largest credit certifier were largely worthless. As a result of that and other research, the market value of voluntary credits collapsed by 60 per cent that year and, for the most part, never recovered.
In response, Swinfield and his colleagues analysed 44 projects started after United Nations guidelines for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) were developed in the 2010s. Thirty-six of them resulted in at least slightly less deforestation than would have been expected if the project didn't exist, and only one resulted in significantly more deforestation.
At the same time, only about 1/11th of the credits were justified. But that average was inflated by the eight projects that didn't reduce deforestation, which also issued the largest number of credits. Excluding the nine top credit sellers, about one-quarter of credits were legitimate.
The over-crediting was largely caused by two main errors, which may have been unintentional, says Swinfield. To estimate how much forest in a project area would have been cut down if it hadn't been protected, credit developers looked at how much had already been chopped down in a similar, unprotected 'reference area'. They then modelled how much more deforestation might occur in the future on top of this.
But developers selected reference areas that were more exposed to deforestation because they were closer to a road or on gentler terrain. And they tended to pick the worst-case scenario for future deforestation, rather than a more likely middle-of-the-road one.
The study cited a project in the Amazon rainforest in Peru designed to create an alternative income source to slash-and-burn agriculture for 18 local communities. The French company that developed it selected a patch of rainforest around the project area as the reference area. But this reference area was on average lower, less steep, less heavily forested and about half as far from the nearest road, meaning it was likely to suffer greater deforestation than the project area in any case.
'Many of these projects may have been good, but the methods used to work out how much credit should have been generated were often bad,' says Swinfield.
If developers, credit certifiers and ratings agencies hold projects to the more accurate methodology outlined in the research, it would cut down on over-crediting. But it would also increase the price of carbon credits, since there would be fewer credits, and development costs would be higher. So companies should also pay more for carbon credits if they want to claim to have net-zero emissions, says Swinfield's collaborator Julia Jones at Bangor University, UK.
'The era of companies being able to offset their carbon emissions by buying really cheap emissions [credits] that claim to slow deforestation in poor countries, I think that is over,' she says. 'You can't deliver equitable and effective forest conservation for a low price.'
An avoided deforestation credit, which is supposed to represent 1 tonne of avoided CO2 emissions, can still be purchased for as little as a few dollars. From high-quality projects, it can cost tens of dollars.
Meanwhile, a different type of credit for actively removing carbon from the atmosphere, either through tree planting or novel techniques like direct air capture machines, costs hundreds of dollars at least.
'There needs to be a market for high-quality carbon credits that genuinely do what they say on the tin in terms of avoided deforestation,' says Jones.
While avoided deforestation credits do prevent some emissions, as the study shows, they are incompatible with the Paris Agreement goal of reaching net-zero emissions, says Danny Cullenward at the University of Pennsylvania. That's because companies are buying them to offset rather than actually reduce their emissions.
If they truly wanted to help forests and the climate, they would buy high-quality credits and not 'retire' them against their emissions budget, says Cullenward. Or they would simply donate funds to forest conservation. Either way, it is important to quantify deforestation risk more accurately.
'We need to protect tropical forests, and if we know how to measure impact, we can pay for and quantify those benefits without making an offsetting claim,' he says. 'We can do so with or without carbon credits.'

A Brazil-led initiative that is pulling together a global roadmap to end deforestation will invite countries to produce their own voluntary pathways to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030, experts managing the process said this week.
At last year's COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belém, a group of around 80 countries led a failed push to start developing two new global roadmaps – one to stop deforestation by 2030 and another to transition away from fossil fuels. All countries signed up to these commitments in a landmark deal at COP28 in Dubai, but little progress has been made to implement them since then.
As a bridging alternative, Brazil's COP30 presidency agreed to draft two voluntary versions of these roadmaps. COP30 officials said a final version of the deforestation roadmap will be published by September this year, after receiving more than 130 written submissions from countries.
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This Monday, Juliano Assunção, executive director of Climate Policy Initiative/PUC-Rio in Brazil and an advisor to the COP30 presidency on deforestation, presented a first outline of the roadmap to countries at the United Nations Forum on Forests in New York (UNFF21).
Assunção said the roadmap 'will not prescribe a single model', but would rather invite countries to translate commitments they have already made to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 – which is a longstanding global goal – 'into forest roadmaps grounded on regional and national diagnosis'.
In 2025, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest, an area roughly the size of Denmark, according to annual data published by Global Forest Watch. While that was 36% lower than in 2024 when climate-fuelled fires pushed forest loss to a record high, deforestation was still 70% higher than it should to be to meet the 2030 international pledge to end it, the report said.
What will be in the roadmap?
Assunção said the COP30 team 'were positively surprised by the level of depth and how comprehensive' the contributions from countries and experts were in the consultation phase for the global roadmap, noting that these served to inform the current outline.
The plan is for the global roadmap report to be structured in two parts: one on the social, economic and environmental risk of continued forest loss; and a second presenting a menu of options to tackle deforestation by 2030.
'The roadmap will be practical, based on countries' experiences. It will help identify the key challenges, and understand their drivers, which vary quite differently among different countries. It's going to be drawing on existing policy tools,' Assunção told countries at the UN forests meeting this week.
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The COP30 advisor said that, while countries can draft national plans, there's also 'a lot of room for international co-operation', which governments themselves requested as part of the consultation.
The roadmap will include a sub-section on international co-operation, which will include how countries can share tools such as satellite platforms to improve monitoring systems, how to improve the finance architecture to channel more resources for forests, and how to align international regulations on trade, crime and due diligence to protect forests.
Marco Tulio Cabral, a diplomat at Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs who leads the deforestation roadmap process, told governments that, while the document is not a negotiated outcome, the COP30 presidency is 'investing a lot of time and effort' in talking with countries to 'make as good a text as we can' that represents a range of views.
He noted that, while the COP30 initiative for a fossil-fuel phase-out roadmap led to a coalition of countries that gathered for a first landmark conference in Santa Marta last month, a similar dedicated push is not necessarily expected for a deforestation roadmap.
'The supportive actors and those who oppose it are very different, so there are limits to what we can do together or associate one thing with the other,' Cabral said.
Cattle graze on deforested areas of the Ituxi ranch near Kaxarari Indigenous land, in Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil August 12, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Adriano Machado) Cattle graze on deforested areas of the Ituxi ranch near Kaxarari Indigenous land, in Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil August 12, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Adriano Machado)
Forest nations seek focus on local realities
Countries at the UN event were supportive of the roadmap, but also expressed the need to offer real alternatives to rural communities.
Joseph Malassi, climate advisor at the Ministry of Environment of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), said that in the Congo basin – the planet's second-largest rainforest – deforestation 'is not caused by vast industrial or infrastructure projects, but rather by extreme poverty' as local people cut down trees for firewood, minerals or crops.
'The roadmap will be confronted with these realities,' Malassi said, adding that it should avoid competing with other UN forest initiatives already working at the intersection of conservation and development.
Nicholas Suryobasuindro of Indonesia's Ministry of Forests, which manages another mega-diverse rainforest basin, welcomed the Brazilian roadmap, adding it will need to address the 'complex interaction between land use chains, economic pressure, spatial planning challenges and development needs'.
Finance will be key to dealing with these realities, according to Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana's permanent ambassador to the UN. She said the roadmap should take into account an existing six-point plan to scale up forest finance launched last year by 34 countries.
Two options in that plan in particular have potential to drive up funding for forest protection and 'must immediately receive strong international support', she added. They are a new rainforest fund called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) – launched last year by Brazil and supported by several donor governments – and 'high-integrity jurisdictional' carbon markets, which refers to government-led sales of carbon credits from large forested areas.
'Both approaches can support countries with different forest and deforestation profiles, including countries with historically low deforestation rates achieved with sustainable forest management,' Rodrigues-Birkett said.

At last year's COP30, Brazil promised to draft a global roadmap to end deforestation, which is set for release by September

COP30 roadmap to end deforestation will invite countries to draft domestic plans

The Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has less than half of its cocoa exports for 2024 traceable to their origins, raising concerns about meeting the EU's new anti-deforestation standards. The non-profit Trase has highlighted issues with the country's supply chain transparency.
Brussels' forthcoming regulations require EU importers to ensure that their commodities aren't sourced from deforested land. However, only 48% of Ivorian cocoa can currently be traced back to its cooperatives, largely due to intermediaries. This lack of traceability complicates efforts to tackle related environmental and social issues.
To align with EU expectations, Ivory Coast is implementing a digitalized system to streamline transaction verifications. Despite a decline in deforestation rates over the last decade, significant forest loss remains a concern, largely driven by cocoa expansion.
(With inputs from agencies.)

The Ivory Coast, a major cocoa producer, faces challenges in complying with the EU's anti-deforestation law, as less than half of its cocoa can be traced back to its origin. Trase reports the…

WASHINGTON — Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that "tipping point" arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.
This presents a conundrum for the expansion of Amazonian agriculture, which has cleared about a fifth of the region's forests in the past 50 years but also depends on consistent rainfall. In the context of climate change, the authors write, deforestation limits once thought sufficient to maintain hydrological stability may no longer be enough. Warming is predicted to make the Amazon drier.
"The way I see this is like the snake eating its own tail," said Eduardo Maeda, an Earth system scientist at the University of Helsinki and senior author on the study. "Our results demonstrate to producers in the south of the Amazon that their activities are impacting their profits and their future."
The study will appear Thursday, May 7 in Geophysical Research Letters, AGU's journal for high-impact, innovative, and timely articles on major advances across the geosciences.
For rainforests, size matters
Currently, Maeda said, laws prohibit landowners in Amazon forest areas from deforesting more than 20% of their land. "That is not enough," he said. "We need to do more." In a worst-case warming scenario, his team estimates, maintaining current annual rainfall in areas larger than 210 square kilometers would require limiting deforestation to no more than 10% of that area.
Doing so would not only conserve the Amazon's biodiversity and carbon-sequestering capacity and help prevent wildfires, all of which take cues from rain and temperature — it would also protect the agricultural livelihoods driving deforestation in the first place. If annual rainfall fell even 4%, it could cut Amazonian soybean yields by up to 8%.
Those consequences owe to the delicate relationship between forests and rain, which doesn't follow the same playbook in every instance. In small doses, deforestation can actually bring more rain. Clearing trees from a patch of land makes the air hotter, Maeda explained. That heat, rising, pumps moisture emitted from the surrounding forest into the sky over the deforested area, where it condenses and falls as rain.
Clear a massive swath, however, and you'll get the opposite: if not enough forest remains to supply moisture, rainfall over the deforested area will decline.
"[Different] sizes of deforested area affect rainfall differently," Maeda said. "If you deforest 80% of a small farm, but it's surrounded by forest, it's not a big deal. But if you deforest 80% of the whole state, then it will have a huge [impact]."
What remained uncertain, however, was how climate change might alter the link between deforestation and rainfall in the future. To find out, the authors used a weather simulation model to estimate the effects of different climate change and deforestation scenarios on rainfall. They focused their analysis on a hotspot of agricultural growth in the southern Amazon where forest cover continues to dwindle while croplands and pasturelands expand.
Saving the rain
In all land area sizes the team considered, climate change caused rainfall to become more sensitive to deforestation. In a 90-by-90-kilometer area fixed at the climate conditions of 2005 to 2014, for instance, they found that rainfall starts to decline once half the land has no forest. In this case, projected deforestation by 2050 cuts annual rainfall by 1.7%.
Add the warming of a low-emissions future into the mix, however, and things start drying up once 45% of the land lies bare, with up to almost 14% less rainfall by 2050. In a high-emissions scenario, only 10% of the land need be treeless before annual rainfall starts to dwindle, potentially declining almost 11% by mid-century.
"As climate changes in the region, we expect the air to become warmer and drier. The moisture we had before that could be recycled [as] rainfall starts to become less and less," Maeda explained. With less moisture available to begin with, cutting down the trees that pump that moisture into the sky to become rain takes an additional toll. Even the initial rainfall boost from small-scale deforestation gets weaker as climate change progresses, the team wrote.
"We now have strong arguments to show that we need to increase [forest] protection," Maeda said. "Producers need to understand the ecosystems that are supporting their activities, and to learn how to preserve them so all of us can benefit from [them]."
Protecting the rain in a changing climate might involve alternative approaches to agriculture, such as agroforestry systems that intersperse native trees among the crops to minimize rainfall loss and heat buildup. "We already have a lot of deforested areas, so the argument is that we don't need any more," Maeda said. "We just need to make these areas more productive and to produce things in a way that is better integrated into the ecosystem."
Notes for journalists:

WASHINGTON — Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of

Deforestation Cuts Amazon Rainfall, Climate Speeds It Up

Around two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest could shift into degraded forest or savannah-like ecosystems at 1.5-1.9°C of global warming if deforestation increases to roughly 22-28 percent of the Amazon, according to a new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published in Nature. Without additional deforestation, by contrast, such large-scale changes would likely occur only at much higher warming levels of around 3.7–4°C.
"Deforestation makes the Amazon far less resilient than we previously anticipated. It dries out the atmosphere and weakens the forest's own rainfall generation," said Nico Wunderling, PIK scientist and lead author of the study. "Even moderate additional warming could then trigger cascading impacts across large parts of the forest."
Around 17-18 percent of the Amazon forest has already been lost, placing the system close to the critical range identified in the study.
Climate change and deforestation interact to cascade impacts across the Amazon
The study provides the most detailed quantification yet of how warming and deforestation simultaneously impact the stability of the Amazon. It combines climate projections, hydrological modelling and a network approach of atmospheric moisture transport.
"Global warming and deforestation affect rainfall feedbacks across the Amazon system," explained Arie Staal, Assistant Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study. "When deforestation interrupts moisture transport in one area of the Amazon, entire regions hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away can also lose resilience through cascading drought effects."
A key reason for forest degradation is that the Amazon is able to generate part of its own rainfall: up to half of its precipitation comes from water recycled by the trees themselves. Trees in the Amazon release water vapour into the atmosphere that later falls again as rain across the basin. When rainforest is lost, this moisture recycling weakens, drought stress increases and other forest regions become more vulnerable to degradation.
The scientists emphasised that halting deforestation and restoring forest cover could substantially strengthen the Amazon's resilience to unavoidable warming.
"Until now, the Amazon rainforest has played a vital role in stabilising the Earth system as a carbon sink, regulator of moisture recycling and host of Earth's richest biodiversity on land. Continued deforestation is undermining this stability, pushing the forest closer to a tipping point. This would not only be devastating for the region, but could have far-reaching consequences for the entire planet," said Johan Rockström, PIK Director and co-author of the study.
"However, these changes are not inevitable. Stopping deforestation, together with ecologically restoring degraded forests and rapid emission cuts can still reduce the risks," Rockström concluded.

Around two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest could shift into degraded forest or savannah-like ecosystems at 1.5-1.9°C of global warming if

Deforestation Lowers Amazon's 2°C Degradation Threshold

DEFOREST, Wis. (WMTV) -A large outdoor fire broke out overnight at a recycling center in DeForest. A viewer sent WMTV a video of flames and smoke on the 5000 block of Norway Grove School Road right next to the Town of Vienna.
WMTV confirmed the fire took place at Diehl Neumaier which is a recycling center. An employee tells us that a pile of scrap metal caught fire. No buildings or equipment were damaged. No one was hurt.
Crews were on the scene just before midnight on Monday and battled the fire well into the early morning hours of Tuesday.
We are working to learn more about this fire, including how it started. Stay with WMTV 15 News for the very latest on the developing story. DEFOREST, Wis. (WMTV) -A large outdoor fire broke out overnight at a recycling center in DeForest. A viewer sent WMTV a video of flames and smoke on the 5000 block of Norway Grove School Road right next to the Town of Vienna.
WMTV confirmed the fire took place at Diehl Neumaier which is a recycling center. An employee tells us that a pile of scrap metal caught fire. No buildings or equipment were damaged. No one was hurt.
Crews were on the scene just before midnight on Monday and battled the fire well into the early morning hours of Tuesday.
We are working to learn more about this fire, including how it started. Stay with WMTV 15 News for the very latest on the developing story.

A viewer sent WMTV a video of flames and smoke on the 5000 block of Norway Grove School Road.

Large fire breaks out at recycling center in DeForest

DEFOREST, Wis. (WKOW) — A fire broke out at 5466 Norway Grove School Road in DeForest overnight.
DeForest Windsor Fire & EMS confirmed the call came in at 11:55 p.m. on Tuesday night. No injures were reported.
Officials said the fire started from a large scrap pile in a junk yard.

DEFOREST, Wis. (WKOW) — A fire broke out at 5466 Norway Grove School Road in DeForest overnight.

Fire erupts overnight at a DeForest junk yard

Deforestation of 22-28% of the Amazon Rainforest, coupled with 1.5-1.9°C of global warming, could trigger a widespread shift of the Amazon Rainforest to degraded forest and savanna grassland ecosystems, a new study warns.
This looming Amazon threshold modeled by researchers could be reached as early as the 2040s. Hitting this rainforest loss/global temperature threshold, or tipping point, could ultimately impact more than 70% of the Amazon Basin within decades, resulting in release of large amounts of carbon stored in forest and soils.
Roughly 17-18% of the Amazon has already been deforested, and global temperatures are expected to rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels annually as early as 2030.
Experts underline that the new findings reinforce the urgent need to halt Amazon deforestation, restore significant amounts of rainforest and drastically slash carbon emissions.
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Deforestation coupled with climate change is rapidly pushing the Amazon Rainforest toward a perilous tipping point that could come much sooner than previously thought. That's the warning from a new paper, published in Nature, which determined that deforestation of 22-28% of the rainforest, combined with 1.5-1.9° Celsius (2.7-3.4° Fahrenheit) of global warming, could trigger a widespread transformation of the biome as early as the 2040s.
Researchers found that crossing this deforestation/global temperature threshold could lead to more than two-thirds of the rainforest becoming degraded or transitioning to a savanna ecosystem. Currently, about 17-18% of the Amazon is deforested and 1.5°C of warming over preindustrial levels is likely to be officially reached by 2030, while scientists say it is increasingly likely 2°C (3.6°F) of warming may be surpassed by 2050.
In the worst-case scenario, 'This critical [Amazon] threshold could be reached as early as the 2040s,' Nico Wunderling, first author on the paper and a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Mongabay in an interview. 'Although I'd be a little bit more optimistic: If current [downward] trends [for] Brazilian deforestation continue, then deforestation-wise, we might not reach [the tipping point] by mid-century.'
'I think we can confidently say that the more deforestation happens, the lower this global warming threshold becomes,' said Arie Staal, study co-author and an assistant professor at Utrecht University.
For Carlos Nobre, a professor at the University of São Paulo and co-chair of the
Science Panel for the Amazon, who wasn't involved in the study, this new research serves as an urgent warning that the Amazon's tipping point could be reached far sooner than formerly anticipated. Previous research published in 2016 and led by Nobre pointed to around 20-25% deforestation and 2°C warming as a critical Amazon threshold.
'The paper is an improvement of the study we published 10 years ago along the same lines, [and] it shows we are even closer to a tipping point,' Nobre said in an interview with Mongabay. 'I think this paper is very important to show how urgently we have to save the Amazon.'
A 'tremendous risk'
The authors of the new paper analyzed climate projections, hydrological modeling and atmospheric moisture transport to arrive at their findings.
Up to half of the Amazon Rainforest's precipitation is recycled by its trees, but large-scale deforestation disrupts this vital biome-wide hydrological cycle. Major tree loss reduces the release of water vapor to the atmosphere, decreases rainfall and intensifies drought. And when moisture transport is disrupted in one area, the resulting drought stress can kill trees hundreds of kilometers away, Staal explained.
Where Amazon deforestation occurs could be crucial. According to the team's simulations, projected forest loss will happen predominantly in the eastern Amazon Basin contributing to 'downwind cascading transitions,' with much dryer air moving westward over the more forested part of the biome, weakening the hydrological cycle.
However, 'If we're beyond a tipping point, that doesn't mean that that the Amazon Rainforest is gone the next day,' Wunderling explained, as that process would unfold over decades. 'But it means that we're then on a hard-to-reverse trajectory.'
Hitting the threshold would mean less rainfall, triggering a transition of healthy rainforest into dry forest, savanna or treeless ecosystems, though the detailed impact remains unclear. 'But what is clear,' Wunderling said, is that the Amazon would become 'a type of degraded ecosystem that cannot fulfill its ecosystem services, such as water recycling, such as the biodiversity … we currently see.'
This scenario is already playing out in the heavily deforested southern Amazon, Nobre noted, a region already very close to its own tipping point. There, the dry season has already been extended by 4-5 weeks annually and rainfall has seriously declined.
Consequences of hitting this threshold across the wider Amazon would be far-reaching, including the loss of the rainforest's unique biodiversity, disruption of regional water cycles, and in time, the release of billions of tons of CO2 currently locked up in Amazonia's forest and soils.
'This is a tremendous risk for the Amazon,' Nobre emphasized. But in turn, these impacts would eventually extend far beyond the rainforest, with other ecosystems, such as tropical savanna that depend upon the rainforest for moisture, becoming deeply degraded and transitioning from grassland to semiarid vegetation.
Halting deforestation, ramping up reforestation
The current study offered an additional finding: In the absence of additional Amazon deforestation, a large-scale transition would not become likely until warming levels of around 3.7-4°C (6.7-7.2°F). This would still be a 'highly unsafe scenario' for the rainforest, the authors write, as up to 35% of the Amazon would still degrade or become savanna.
But for Wunderling, this finding shows that the existing rainforest system has resilience in the face of warming temperatures — provided that deforestation is tempered. That's a finding which offers hope that the Amazon crisis 'can be turned around,' he said. 'In that way, it is a positive scenario, as it shows we need to reach a very high level of warming [of 3.7–4°C] before we see these partial system-wide Amazon Rainforest transition risks.'
The study authors emphasize the urgent need for action to bolster rainforest resilience in the face of climate change by protecting existing forest and restoring lost forest areas. They point to efforts such as Brazil's pledged restoration of 24 million hectares (59.3 million acres) of rainforest as positive steps.
Wunderling noted that new research could be done to determine exactly where reforestation would do the most good, 'so that this atmospheric moisture recycling feedback is revitalized.'
'The negative effects of deforestation can largely be compensated … by reforestation,' Staal added, which 'also would give [the world] time' to decarbonize.
Nobre agreed to the urgent call for action: 'We really have to move very quickly to stop complete deforestation and degradation [and] do larger forest restoration [while] avoiding global warming reaching 1.8°C [3.2°F],' he said.
'If we don't do that by 2040, we cross the tipping point; then it is impossible to save the Amazon.'
Banner image: Burned-over forest in the Brazilian state of Acre, one of the epicenters of deforestation in the Amazon. Image by Victor Moriyama/Climate Visuals (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Citation:
Wunderling, N., Sakschewski, B., Rockström, J., Flores, B. M., Hirota, M., Staal, A. (2026): Deforestation-induced drying lowers Amazon climate threshold. Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10456-0
Hansen, J. E., Sato, M., Simons, L., Nazarenko, L. S., Sangha, I., Kharecha, P., … Li, J. (2023). Global warming in the pipeline. Oxford Open Climate Change. doi:10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
Nobre, C. A., Sampaio, G., Borma, L. S., Castilla-Rubio, J. C., Silva, J. S., & Cardoso, M. (2016). Land-use and climate change risks in the Amazon and the need of a novel sustainable development paradigm. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(39), 10759-10768. doi:10.1073/pnas.1605516113
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Deforestation coupled with climate change is rapidly pushing the Amazon Rainforest toward a perilous tipping point that could come much sooner than previously thought. That's the warning from a new paper, published in Nature, which determined that deforestation of 22-28% of the rainforest, combined with 1.5-1.9° Celsius (2.7-3.4° Fahrenheit) of global warming, could trigger a […]

Deforestation and warming could push Amazon to tipping point by 2040s: Study

The police chief attributed deforestation to indiscriminate logging in spite of threats to environmental sustainability and public safety.
The Commissioner of Police in Jigawa State, Haruna Yahaya, has expressed concern over the spate of deforestation caused by indiscriminate tree felling in the state.
Mr Yahaya said this on Tuesday during a homage visit to the Emir of Kazaure, Najib Hussaini Adamu.
In a statement issued Tuesday in Dutse, the state capital, Shiisu Adam, the police command spokesperson, said Mr Yahaya attributed deforestation to indiscriminate logging in spite of threats to environmental sustainability and public safety.
He urged local authorities and community leaders to support efforts to tackle the menace.
The commissioner also decried the increase in cases of mob action, jungle justice and culpable homicide, warning residents against taking the law into their own hands.
Mr Yahaya advised the people to report suspected criminals and disputes to security agencies for lawful intervention rather than resorting to violence.
The commissioner of police also met with council chairmen and other stakeholders as part of efforts to strengthen security collaboration and community policing initiatives.
"The CP emphasised the command's readiness to ensure a secure and violence-free electoral atmosphere before, during and after the elections.
"The police will continue to contribute to avoid road accidents, loss of lives, and other criminal activities in the state," the statement said.
While assuring personnel of improved welfare and operational efficiency, Yahaya underscored the importance of intelligence sharing and community participation in crime prevention through strong synergy among security agencies, traditional institutions, local authorities, and vigilantes.

The police chief attributed deforestation to indiscriminate logging in spite of threats to environmental sustainability and public safety.

Nigeria: Commissioner of Police Laments Rising Deforestation in Jigawa

BRASILIA, May 12 (Reuters) - Brazil's government decided on Tuesday to delay the implementation of a rule requiring banks to ‌use satellite imagery to check whether rural loan applicants had ‌engaged in deforestation before approving subsidized public credit.
The rule had faced strong opposition from ​the powerful farm sector, with Brazil's Agriculture Ministry itself having asked for the measure to be postponed or scrapped.
At an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday, Brazil's National Monetary Council (CMN), the country's top economic policymaking body, decided that ‌the rule - which took ⁠effect in April for rural properties larger than four fiscal modules, a land measurement unit used in ⁠Brazil - will now only apply from January 2027 for properties larger than 15 fiscal modules.
For areas between four and 15 fiscal modules, the verification ​requirement will ​only take effect in July ​2027, while for smaller properties ‌of up to four fiscal modules, the rule will now come into force in January 2028, compared with the previous deadline of January 2027.
The Finance Ministry, whose chief sits on the CMN alongside the planning minister and the central bank governor, said farmers whose credit ‌applications were rejected while the rule ​was in force will be allowed to ​resubmit them.
The ministry said the ​delay would allow for procedural improvements by the ‌agencies involved in the process and ​for helping farmers ​prepare.
Supporters of the rule argued the government needed more tools in its anti-deforestation arsenal. As on-the-ground enforcement has become more ​difficult, the measure was ‌designed to curb deforestation by restricting access to billions of ​dollars in subsidized public credit.

BRASILIA, May 12 (Reuters) - Brazil's government decided on Tuesday to delay the implementation of a rule requiring banks to use satellite imagery to check whether rural loan applicants had engaged in

Brazil delays rule barring subsidized rural loans for deforested areas

LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivorian cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming anti-deforestation law, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday by the non-profit Trase.
From December the law will require that EU importers of commodities and related goods prove their products weren't grown on deforested land by, among other measures, tracing their raw materials back to the plot on which they were grown.
According to Trase, only 48% of Ivory Coast's 2024 cocoa exports can be traced back to the farming cooperatives that grew the beans, largely because the rest of the supply chain is "indirect" or composed of several intermediaries.
The figures have not changed much since the non-profit's prior analysis published two years ago.
"The prevalence of indirect supplies of cocoa and the resulting lack of visibility into its origins makes it very difficult for companies to address issues such as deforestation or child labour," said UK-based Trase, which maps the international trade and financing of agricultural commodities using publicly available data.
Ivory Coast's cocoa regulator did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In order to help meet the EU regulations, the country has opted for a digitalised sales and purchasing system that also facilitates verification.
LIMITED AMOUNT OF FOREST REMAINS
The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been hailed as a landmark in the fight against climate change but Brussels, which has twice delayed implementing the law, remains under pressure to delay it further and scale it back.
EU trade partners, including Brazil, Indonesia and, crucially, the U.S., say complying with the law is cumbersome and costly. As part of its trade deal with U.S. President Donald Trump, the EU committed to working to address U.S. concerns over the law.
Ivory Coast grows just over a third of the world's cocoa and the EU is its largest trading partner, importing 66% of the country's beans.
Between 2000 and 2024, 79% of the West African nation's forests were lost or degraded, according to Trase, with cocoa expansion accounting for nearly half of forest loss during much of the period.
"Although overall rates of deforestation in Côte d'Ivoire have declined over the last decade, this is partly due to the limited amount of forest remaining," said the non-profit, referring to the country by its French name.
Deforestation is the second-leading cause of climate change after the burning of fossil fuels.
By May Angel

The amount of Ivorian cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming...
-May 12, 2026 at 10:21 am EDT
- MarketScreener

Washington, D.C.— Today, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin), an active member of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee and of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC), released a video introducing the 'Trade Responsibly for Environmental Emissions Act,' or 'TREE Act.' By prohibiting the import of commodities and products derived from lands affected by deforestation or forest degradation, this bill is designed to position the United States as a leader together with the European Union in the struggle to protect one of our greatest tools to reduce greenhouse emissions: our forests.
In this new video, Rep. Doggett discusses the importance of the TREE Act with Jennifer Skene, the Global Forest Policy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Image
WATCH VIDEO HERE.
Each year, over 25 million acres around the world are being deforested, accounting for up to 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions. To incentivize forest protection, a new law, the European Union Deforestation Regulation, requires companies marketing products in the EU to certify that certain commodities—palm oil, rubber, soy, cocoa, cattle, and wood— and products derived from them have not been sourced from areas of deforestation and forest degradation. The TREE Act would establish a similar requirement for U.S. companies importing and selling these commodities and derived products, ensure consistent trade standards and ensure that American companies lead the way in the effort to protect the world's invaluable forests. Many American companies already responsibly doing just that.
'Our world's incredible forests, which serve as the lungs of our planet and the habitat for so many diverse plants and animals, are vanishing at an incredible pace,' said Rep. Doggett. 'The TREE Act will not only protect our forests from those who seek to profit from their destruction, it will also help American businesses by assuring that they are responsible for compliance with a single, uniform set of sustainability trade rules.'
'Forest loss and degradation do not occur in a vacuum: they are driven by outmoded, irresponsible trade practices. From wood pulp to palm oil, the U.S. marketplace is saturated with products that needlessly come at the expense of forests and the invaluable role they play in sustaining life on earth, 'said Jennifer Skene, Global Forest Policy Director at Natural Resources Defense Council. 'The TREE Act creates long-overdue guardrails that ensure U.S. purchasers aren't unwittingly purchasing forest destruction alongside their toilet paper and shampoo. It sets up consistent, common-sense trade standards that make the marketplace—and our future— healthier and more resilient.'
"Addressing deforestation, both global and domestic, is a key solution to the climate crisis,' said Anna Medema, Associate Director of Legislative Affairs for Forests and Public Lands at Sierra Club. 'By curbing demand for commodities derived from deforestation and forest degradation, the TREE Act will protect forests for both their carbon sequestration and their biodiversity values, as well as support sustainable sourcing for American businesses. Sierra Club applauds the introduction of this important bill and thanks Rep. Doggett for his leadership in this effort.
'At a time when too many in power are eager to roll back environmental protections in the U.S., we support the lawmakers who are standing up for global forests by introducing the TREE Act,' said Alex Armstrong, Vice President of External Affairs at Mighty Earth. 'Products coming into the U.S. like beef, soy, timber, cocoa, rubber, and palm oil are tainted by legal and illegal deforestation that is harming communities and wildlife. People and animals around the world rely on standing forests for their survival, and Americans don't want to buy goods produced in the ashes of tropical rainforests. This legislation would set a new standard for forest protection in global supply chains. The world lost the equivalent of more than 15 football fields of primary forest every minute last year, so we are encouraged to see an ambitious policy proposal – one that is commensurate with the scale of the challenge of global deforestation.'
This bill is cosponsored by Representatives Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Greg Casar (TX-35), Sean Casten (IL-06), Kathy Castor (FL-14), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05), Steve Cohen (TN-09), Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Maxwell Frost (FL-10), Adelita Grijalva (AZ-07), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Hank Johnson (GA-04), Summer Lee (PA-12), James McGovern (MA-02), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C. At-large), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Mike Quigley (IL-05), Jamie Raskin (MA-08), Janice Schakowsky (IL-09), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Nikema Williams (GA-05).
You can watch the video here.
The bill text can be found here and a bill summary can be found here.
###

Washington, D.C.— Today, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin), an active member of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee and of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC), released a…

Video Release: Doggett Introduces 'Trade Responsibly for Environmental Emissions Act'

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012. But many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk, reports the AP . Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging, and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 by a strong El Niño, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires. "Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition," said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink, it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs. Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift. Degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 656 square miles, while degradation affected about 1,706 square miles. During the 2023 and 2024 El Niño, temperatures rose 3.5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed. A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Niño. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Niño would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought. The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions—and time—to germinate and grow. "The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently," Maracahipes said. "And it has to be now."

Forest degradation is now a bigger problem than deforestation, and El Niño could make it worse

Brazil Slows Amazon Deforestation, but Other Threats Loom

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging, and drought, continues to outpace deforestation.

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging, and drought, continues to outpace…

Amazon's deforestation drop meets a tougher foe: forest degradation racing ahead

7 May 2026
AGU press contact:
Sean Cummings, [email protected] (UTC-7 hours)
Researcher contact:
Eduardo Maeda, University of Helsinki; Finnish Meteorological Institute, [email protected] (UTC +3 hours)
WASHINGTON — Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that 'tipping point' arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.
This presents a conundrum for the expansion of Amazonian agriculture, which has cleared about a fifth of the region's forests in the past 50 years but also depends on consistent rainfall. In the context of climate change, the authors write, deforestation limits once thought sufficient to maintain hydrological stability may no longer be enough. Warming is predicted to make the Amazon drier.
'The way I see this is like the snake eating its own tail,' said Eduardo Maeda, an Earth system scientist at the University of Helsinki and senior author on the study. 'Our results demonstrate to producers in the south of the Amazon that their activities are impacting their profits and their future.'
The study appears in Geophysical Research Letters, AGU's journal for high-impact, innovative, and timely articles on major advances across the geosciences.
For rainforests, size matters
Currently, Maeda said, laws prohibit landowners in Amazon forest areas from deforesting more than 20% of their land. 'That is not enough,' he said. 'We need to do more.' In a worst-case warming scenario, his team estimates, maintaining current annual rainfall in areas larger than 210 square kilometers would require limiting deforestation to no more than 10% of that area.
Doing so would not only conserve the Amazon's biodiversity and carbon-sequestering capacity and help prevent wildfires, all of which take cues from rain and temperature — it would also protect the agricultural livelihoods driving deforestation in the first place. If annual rainfall fell even 4%, it could cut Amazonian soybean yields by up to 8%.
Those consequences owe to the delicate relationship between forests and rain, which doesn't follow the same playbook in every instance. In small doses, deforestation can actually bring more rain. Clearing trees from a patch of land makes the air hotter, Maeda explained. That heat, rising, pumps moisture emitted from the surrounding forest into the sky over the deforested area, where it condenses and falls as rain.
Clear a massive swath, however, and you'll get the opposite: if not enough forest remains to supply moisture, rainfall over the deforested area will decline.
'[Different] sizes of deforested area affect rainfall differently,' Maeda said. 'If you deforest 80% of a small farm, but it's surrounded by forest, it's not a big deal. But if you deforest 80% of the whole state, then it will have a huge [impact].'
What remained uncertain, however, was how climate change might alter the link between deforestation and rainfall in the future. To find out, the authors used a weather simulation model to estimate the effects of different climate change and deforestation scenarios on rainfall. They focused their analysis on a hotspot of agricultural growth in the southern Amazon where forest cover continues to dwindle while croplands and pasturelands expand.
Saving the rain
In all land area sizes the team considered, climate change caused rainfall to become more sensitive to deforestation. In a 90-by-90-kilometer area fixed at the climate conditions of 2005 to 2014, for instance, they found that rainfall starts to decline once half the land has no forest. In this case, projected deforestation by 2050 cuts annual rainfall by 1.7%.
Add the warming of a low-emissions future into the mix, however, and things start drying up once 45% of the land lies bare, with up to almost 14% less rainfall by 2050. In a high-emissions scenario, only 10% of the land need be treeless before annual rainfall starts to dwindle, potentially declining almost 11% by mid-century.
'As climate changes in the region, we expect the air to become warmer and drier. The moisture we had before that could be recycled [as] rainfall starts to become less and less,' Maeda explained. With less moisture available to begin with, cutting down the trees that pump that moisture into the sky to become rain takes an additional toll. Even the initial rainfall boost from small-scale deforestation gets weaker as climate change progresses, the team wrote.
'We now have strong arguments to show that we need to increase [forest] protection,' Maeda said. 'Producers need to understand the ecosystems that are supporting their activities, and to learn how to preserve them so all of us can benefit from [them].'
Protecting the rain in a changing climate might involve alternative approaches to agriculture, such as agroforestry systems that intersperse native trees among the crops to minimize rainfall loss and heat buildup. 'We already have a lot of deforested areas, so the argument is that we don't need any more,' Maeda said. 'We just need to make these areas more productive and to produce things in a way that is better integrated into the ecosystem.'
Notes for journalists:
This study is published in Geophysical Research Letters, an open access AGU journal. View and download a PDF of the study here (NOTE: We are currently experiencing intermittent technical difficulties with the open access feature for papers in Geophysical Research Letters. If you find yourself unable to view the full study, please email [email protected] for a PDF). Neither this press release nor the study is under embargo.
Paper title:
'Climate change amplifies rainfall sensitivity to deforestation in the Southern Amazon'
Authors:
Jie Zhang, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China
Alice Catherine Hughes, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China; School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Britado Silveira Soares-Filho, Centre for Remote Sensing, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Jose Antonio Marengo, National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters/CEMADEN, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil; Post Graduate program in Natural Disastees, UNESP/CEMADEN, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil; Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
Eduardo Eiji Maeda, Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2, 00014 Helsinki, Finland; Finnish Meteorological Institute, FMI, Finland
AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million professionals and advocates in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.
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Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, an AGU journal.

Deforestation lessens Amazon rainfall, and climate change hastens that process

By May Angel
LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivory Coast cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming anti-deforestation law, according to a new analysis by the non-profit Trase.
From December the law will require that EU importers of commodities and related goods prove their products weren't grown on deforested land by, among other measures, tracing their raw materials back to the plot on which they were grown.
According to Trase, only 48% of Ivory Coast's 2024 cocoa exports can be traced back to the farming cooperatives that grew the beans, largely because the rest of the supply chain is "indirect" or comprised of several intermediaries.
The figures have not changed much since the non-profit's prior analysis published two years ago.
"The prevalence of indirect supplies of cocoa and the resulting lack of visibility into its origins makes it very difficult for companies to address issues such as deforestation or child labour," said Trase.
The EUDR has been hailed as a landmark in the fight against climate change but Brussels, which has twice delayed implementing the law, remains under pressure to delay it further and scale it back.
EU trade partners including Brazil, Indonesia and, crucially, the U.S., say complying with the law is cumbersome and costly. As part of its trade deal with President Donald Trump, the EU committed to working to address U.S. concerns over the law.
Ivory Coast grows just over a third of the world's cocoa and the EU is its largest trading partner, importing 66% of the country's beans.
In order to help meet the EU regulations, Ivory Coast has opted for a digitalised sales and purchasing system to facilitate verification.
Between 2000 and 2024, 79% of the West African nation's forests were lost or degraded, according to Trase, with cocoa expansion accounting for nearly half of forest loss during much of the period.
"Although overall rates of deforestation in Côte d'Ivoire have declined over the last decade, this is partly due to the limited amount of forest remaining," said the non-profit.
Deforestation is the second leading cause of climate change after the burning of fossil fuels.
(Reporting by May AngelEditing by Keith Weir)

LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivory Coast cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this major accomplishment, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, is outpacing deforestation. The Amazon plays a

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this major accomplishment, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, is…

Despite gains combating deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, forest degradation is a looming threat

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:
Choropleth bivariate maps of negative-emission potential and ecological trade-offs from expanding biofuel crops in historically cultivated areas. Credit: PNAS Nexus (2026). https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag123
A technology designed to mitigate global warming could, paradoxically, contribute to carbon emissions if hotter temperatures lead to a shift in where bioenergy crops are grown. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) involves combusting or fermenting biological materials to produce energy while capturing the carbon dioxide emitted by the process and storing it underground. BECCS could help mitigate climate change, and many models of a net-zero emissions future assume widespread use of the technology. However, first generation bioenergy production requires substantial land area to grow the crops used as feedstocks.
Robert Fofrich Navarro and colleagues modeled how climate warming will affect the production of key bioenergy crops. The authors find that up to 40% of existing oil palm production, up to 13% of existing sugarcane production, and up to 10% of existing soybean production will occur in locations within the tropics that will not be suitable for these crops by 2060 under lower warming scenarios.
These results, published in PNAS Nexus, raise the possibility that farmers may expand production to new, cooler areas to maintain production, potentially leading to deforestation. Deforestation would release carbon dioxide as trees are burned or felled. Reductions in ecosystem carbon from deforestation could outweigh the climate benefits of biofuel-based mitigation and threaten species in the tropics, the most biodiverse part of the world. According to the authors, bioenergy strategies must be assessed in the context of climate warming.
Publication details
Climate and ecological constraints of cultivating bioenergy crops for climate mitigation in tropical regions, PNAS Nexus (2026). doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag123
Journal information: PNAS Nexus

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012
Despite gains combating deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, forest degradation is a looming threatBy GABRIELA SÁ PESSOAAssociated PressThe Associated PressSAO PAULO
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012 Despite gains combating deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, forest degradation

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Gabriela Sá Pessoa, The Associated Press

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official…

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging, and drought, continues to outpace deforestation.
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon

A recent analysis by Trase highlights the challenges Ivory Coast faces in conforming to the European Union's new anti-deforestation regulation. The study reveals that less than half of the nation's cocoa can be traced back to its source, posing a significant hurdle for compliance with the law set to take effect in December.
The EU regulation mandates that importers verify their products aren't contributing to deforestation, which requires detailed traceability of cocoa origins. Currently, only 48% of Ivory Coast's cocoa exports can be traced to specific farming cooperatives, primarily due to the prevalence of an indirect supply chain involving numerous intermediaries.
In response to the regulations, Ivory Coast has implemented a digitalized system for sales and purchases to enhance verification processes. Despite such efforts, the country's limited forest areas and ongoing pressure from major trade partners, including the U.S., make full compliance with the EU's anti-deforestation law a challenging endeavor.
(With inputs from agencies.)

The Ivorian cocoa industry struggles to comply with the EU's new anti-deforestation law, needing to trace its cocoa origins more accurately. Only 48% of exports can currently be traced to specific…

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 656 square miles, while degradation affected about 1,706 square miles.
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
FILE – A wildfire consumes land recently deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 29.7 million acres of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 8.4 million acres are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
FILE – Fire brigade members work to put out a wildfire in Apui, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
FILE – A wildfire burns in the Amazon in the municipality of Manaquiri in Brazil's Amazonas state, Sept. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 42 million acres of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
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To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012. Despite […]

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 656 square miles, while degradation affected about 1,706 square miles.
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 29.7 million acres of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 8.4 million acres are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 42 million acres of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'

Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest could turn into degraded forest or savannah-like ecosystems if global warming reaches 1.5-1.9°C above pre-industrial levels and deforestation rises to 22%-28% of the region, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Indigenous people from the Mura tribe show a deforested area inside the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. (Reuters File)
The findings come months after 196 countries at the United Nations climate conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, agreed to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 under Article 5 of the Paris Agreement.
The study said that without additional deforestation, such large-scale drying of the Amazon would likely occur only at much higher warming levels of around 3.7-4°C.
'Deforestation makes the Amazon far less resilient than we previously anticipated. It dries out the atmosphere and weakens the forest's own rainfall generation,' said Nico Wunderling, PIK scientist and lead author of the study.
'Even moderate additional warming could then trigger cascading impacts across large parts of the forest,' he added.
Researchers said around 17-18% of the Amazon forest has already been lost, pushing the ecosystem closer to the critical threshold identified in the study.
The research team used UTrack, a Lagrangian atmospheric moisture tracking model, to trace moisture movement from evaporation to precipitation. The three-dimensional model reconstructs moisture trajectories using evaporation and rainfall data directly.
The study provides a detailed assessment of how warming and deforestation together affect the stability of the Amazon by combining climate projections, hydrological modelling and a network analysis of atmospheric moisture transport.
'Global warming and deforestation affect rainfall feedbacks across the Amazon system,' said Arie Staal, assistant professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study.
'When deforestation interrupts moisture transport in one area of the Amazon, entire regions hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away can also lose resilience through cascading drought effects,' he said.
Researchers said a major reason for forest degradation is the Amazon's dependence on its own moisture recycling system. Up to half of the region's rainfall is generated by water released into the atmosphere by trees, which later falls again as rain across the basin.
'When rainforest is lost, this moisture recycling weakens, drought stress increases and other forest regions become more vulnerable to degradation,' the researchers said.
The paper identified Amazon degradation as one of several global tipping points capable of triggering rapid and irreversible environmental impacts.
It said native biomes worldwide are under increasing threat from human activities and are already showing signs of declining resilience. Among the most vulnerable is the Amazon, where increasing droughts, biodiversity loss, degradation and deforestation are outpacing natural variability.
According to the study, reduced internal moisture transport caused by droughts and deforestation could push large parts of the Amazon beyond their physiological limits.
The paper noted that severe droughts in 2005, 2010, 2015-16 and 2023-24 have already had major impacts on the rainforest and are projected to become more frequent in the coming years.

The study said that without additional deforestation, such large-scale drying of the Amazon would likely occur only at much higher warming levels of around 3.7-4°C.

Amazon rainforest may hit tipping point at 1.9°C global warming: Study

Implement Regulation in Full, Do Not Create Product Loopholes
May 7, 2026
Image Load Image
Cattle walk along an illegally deforested area in an extractive reserve near Jaci-Parana, Rondonia state, Brazil, July 12, 2023.
© 2023 Andre Penner/AP Photo
(Brussels) – The European Commission's announcement that it would not initiate a process to further amend the text of its milestone anti-deforestation regulation paves the way for it to be implemented by the end of 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. However, at the same time, the Commission has proposed to exclude leather from the list of products covered by the regulation, which would create a major loophole.
'It is hard to overstate the transformative effect that the prospect of the regulation has had in hotspots for deforestation and rights abuses,' said Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior environment researcher at Human Rights Watch. 'For this momentum to continue, we need to see robust implementation, and no unjustifiable exclusions.'
In May 2023, the EU adopted the Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR), which requires EU-based companies to ensure that their imports and exports are deforestation-free and are not tainted by being linked to human rights abuses. The regulation applies to seven commodities—wood, palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and cattle—and many products derived from these commodities, such as leather in the case of cattle. To trim obligations for businesses, EU institutions have twice delayed the date by which companies have to start complying and amended the text. The deadline for compliance is now December.
The prospect of implementing the regulation has already prompted positive reforms in tropical forest countries. In Malaysian Borneo, for example, the state of Sarawak announced a moratorium in February 2025 on new permits for oil palm plantations, citing pressure from EU regulations and following a campaign by Human Rights Watch, Indigenous organizations SAVE Rivers and KERUAN, and the international groups Bruno Manser Fonds and Borneo Project.
In Brazil's state of Pará, government officials told Human Rights Watch that their decision to pioneer the first individual cattle traceability system in the Brazilian Amazon was to get ahead of the European regulation requirements, as well as to anticipate similar requirements from Asian markets.
Some member states' representatives, including from Austria, Germany, and Italy, had sought an amendment to the regulation to exclude jurisdictions with low deforestation rates. However, on May 4, the European Commission said it would not reopen the core text of the regulation for additional amendments. This is a positive development, and the European Council and Parliament should also commit to preserving the integrity of this milestone legislation and work promptly towards its robust implementation, Human Rights Watch said. Last year, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest, an area roughly the size of Denmark, according to Global Forest Watch.
Also on May 4, the European Commission opened for public consultation a draft delegated act that would change the list of products covered by the regulation. The consultation is open through June 1. The draft, published following extensive public lobbying by leather industry groups, proposes to exclude leather. Excluding leather from the scope of the regulation would be inconsistent because it would mean that beef from cows raised on illegally deforested land would be excluded from the EU market but leather from those same cows would not be, Human Rights Watch said. The Commission should keep leather within scope of the regulation, the organization said.
In its October 2025 report 'Tainted,' Human Rights Watch found that illegal cattle ranching has devastated the territories of small farmers and Indigenous peoples in Pará. Between 2020 and 2025, JBS, the world's largest meat company, may have exported both beef and leather hides from cattle sourced from illegal ranches in this region to the European Union. JBS said in August 2025 that it would start tracking indirect suppliers in January 2026, but has not replied since to Human Rights Watch queries about implementation of its system. Italy is by far the largest importer of Brazilian hides in the EU. Italian policy makers and industry groups have also pressed for excluding leather.
'It would be absurd to exclude leather from an anti-deforestation law since most of the world's deforestation is driven by cattle ranching and this industry also produces leather,' said Téllez Chávez. 'This supply chain is plagued by allegations of violence against activists, encroachment on Indigenous territories and small-holders, and laundering of illegal assets.'

(Brussels) – The European Commission's announcement that it would not initiate a process to further amend the text of its milestone anti-deforestation regulation paves the way for it to be implemented…

EU: Protect Integrity of Anti-Deforestation Law

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
Other WRAL Top Stories
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012

Despite Gains Combating Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, Forest Degradation Is a Looming Threat

Brazil Amazon Deforestation Wildfires
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers…

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

SAO PAULO — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
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Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
A wildfire consumes land recently deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020. Credit: AP/Andre Penner
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
Fire brigade members work to put out a wildfire in Apui, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sept. 21, 2022. Credit: AP/Edmar Barros
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012.

FILE - A wildfire burns in the Amazon in the municipality of Manaquiri in Brazil's Amazonas state, Sept. 6, 2023.
Edmar Barros/AP
FILE - Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in the rural municipality of Careiro Castanho, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2023.
Edmar Barros/AP
FILE - A wildfire consumes land recently deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020.
Andre Penner/AP
FILE - Fire brigade members work to put out a wildfire in Apui, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sept. 21, 2022.
Edmar Barros/AP
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
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'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
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In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this major accomplishment, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, is...

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
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In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
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Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
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Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
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In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

7 May 2026WASHINGTON  Climate change makes the southern Amazons rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation,. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that tipping point arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.This presents a conundrum for the expansion of Amazonian agriculture, which has cleared about a fifth of the regions forests in the past 50 years but also depends on consistent rainfall. In the context of climate change, the authors write, deforestation limits once thought sufficient to maintain hydrological stability may no longer be enough. Warming is predicted to make the Amazon drier.The way I see this is like the snake eating its own tail, said Eduardo Maeda, an Earth system scientist at the University of Helsinki and senior author on the study. Our results demonstrate to producers in the south of the Amazon that their activities are impacting their profits and their future.Currently, Maeda said, laws prohibit landowners in Amazon forest areas from deforesting more than 20% of their land. That is not enough, he said. We need to do more. In a worst-case warming scenario, his team estimates, maintaining current annual rainfall in areas larger than 210 square kilometers would require limiting deforestation to no more than 10% of that area.

2RecommendRecommend this post https://news.agu.org/press-release/deforestation-lessens-amazon-rainfall-and-climate-change-hastens-that-process/Zhang, J., Hughes, A. C., Soares-Filho, B. S., Marengo,…

FILE - Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in the rural municipality of Careiro Castanho, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)
SAO PAULO – The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
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'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The Amazon, often called the 'lungs of the world,' is edging dangerously close to a point of no return. New research warns that if deforestation continues, large swathes of the world's greatest tropical rainforest could transform into dry, scrubby savannah at global warming levels of just 1.5–1.9°C—far sooner than previously feared.
Published in the journal Nature, the study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) reveals a troubling interaction between deforestation and climate change. Trees in the Amazon don't just absorb carbon—they actively create their own rain. Up to half the region's precipitation comes from moisture recycled by the forest itself. When trees are cut down, this vital feedback loop weakens, drying the air and making the remaining forest more vulnerable to drought, fire, and collapse.
Already 17-18% of the Amazon has been lost. The study finds that at 22-28% deforestation combined with 1.5–1.9°C of warming, the forest could lose its ability to sustain itself across vast areas. Without further deforestation, that tipping threshold would rise to a much higher 3.7–4°C of warming.
'We are pushing the Amazon far less resilient than we previously anticipated,' said lead author Nico Wunderling of PIK. 'Even moderate additional warming could then trigger cascading impacts across large parts of the forest.'
A Domino Effect Stretching Across Continents
The consequences would ripple far beyond the rainforest borders. The Amazon influences rainfall patterns across much of South America. A sharp drop in moisture recycling could hammer agricultural heartlands from southern Brazil through Bolivia, Paraguay, and down to Argentina's Rio de la Plata basin—threatening food production, hydropower, and water security for millions.
Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru derive around 70% of their gross national product from sectors highly sensitive to reduced rainfall: agribusiness, hydropower, and heavy industry. Inland fisheries would suffer, deadly heat stress on humans would intensify, and wildfires would surge, blanketing cities in hazardous smoke.
The ecological and human toll would be devastating. Millions of Indigenous people, including isolated and uncontacted tribes, call the Amazon home. Countless species found nowhere else on Earth face extinction. And the carbon released from a collapsing forest would supercharge global warming in a vicious feedback loop. Disturbingly, shifts in the South American monsoon could even influence weather as far away as the Tibetan Plateau.
Scientists Urge Immediate Action
Professor Carlos Nobre, a pioneer who first raised alarms about an Amazon 'tipping point' decades ago, praised the study as 'very important.' Speaking about the new findings, he stressed urgency: 'Deforestation has reached 17-18% of the Amazon forest and global warming is about to reach 1.5°C by 2030. It is essential to implement nature-based solutions… zero deforestation, degradation and man-made fires by 2030, and large-scale forest restoration.'
Johan Rockström, Director of the PIK and co-author, echoed the call: 'The Amazon has played a vital role in stabilising the Earth system as a carbon sink, regulator of moisture recycling and host of Earth's richest biodiversity on land. Continued deforestation is undermining this stability… These changes are not inevitable. Stopping deforestation, together with ecologically restoring degraded forests and rapid emission cuts can still reduce the risks.'
A Narrow Window for Hope
Global temperatures have already risen about 1.3°C above pre-industrial levels on a long-term basis, briefly surpassing 1.5°C in 2024. Without sharp cuts to fossil fuels, the world is on track to exceed 1.5°C permanently before 2040 and 2°C in the 2050s.
The message from the scientists is clear and sobering: the Amazon's fate is not sealed, but the window to save it is closing fast. Halting deforestation, restoring damaged areas, and slashing emissions offer the best chance to keep the rainforest standing—and the planet's climate system more stable.
The lungs of the world are gasping. Whether they continue to breathe may depend on decisions made in the next few critical years.

The study finds that at 22-28% deforestation combined with 1.51.9C of warming, the forest could lose its ability to sustain itself across vast areas.

Amazon Rainforest Near "Point Of No Return" At 1.5 Degrees Warming: Study

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift. Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 656 square miles, while degradation affected about 1,706 square miles.
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder. FILE – A wildfire consumes land recently deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 29.7 million acres of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 8.4 million acres are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation. Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring. FILE – Fire brigade members work to put out a wildfire in Apui, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest. Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures. FILE – A wildfire burns in the Amazon in the municipality of Manaquiri in Brazil's Amazonas state, Sept. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 42 million acres of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 656 square miles, while degradation affected about 1,706 square miles.
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 29.7 million acres of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 8.4 million acres are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 42 million acres of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest...

Despite gains Combating Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, Forest Degradation Is a Looming Threat

The police chief attributed deforestation to indiscriminate logging in spite of threats to environmental sustainability and public safety.
Oil-well Dispute: Inside the report that restores Cross River's hopeSPECIAL REPORT: How families coped with 10-year closure of 23 schools in OyoAfrophobia! , By Wole OlaoyeOil-well Dispute: Inside the report that restores Cross River's hopeSPECIAL REPORT: How families coped with 10-year closure of 23 schools in OyoAfrophobia!
, By Wole OlaoyeThe Commissioner of Police in Jigawa State, Haruna Yahaya, has expressed concern over the spate of deforestation caused by indiscriminate tree felling in the state. In a statement issued Tuesday in Dutse, the state capital, Shiisu Adam, the police command spokesperson, said Mr Yahaya attributed deforestation to indiscriminate logging in spite of threats to environmental sustainability and public safety.
The commissioner also decried the increase in cases of mob action, jungle justice and culpable homicide, warning residents against taking the law into their own hands. Mr Yahaya advised the people to report suspected criminals and disputes to security agencies for lawful intervention rather than resorting to violence. The commissioner of police also met with council chairmen and other stakeholders as part of efforts to strengthen security collaboration and community policing initiatives.
'The CP emphasised the command's readiness to ensure a secure and violence-free electoral atmosphere before, during and after the elections. 'The police will continue to contribute to avoid road accidents, loss of lives, and other criminal activities in the state,' the statement said. While assuring personnel of improved welfare and operational efficiency, Yahaya underscored the importance of intelligence sharing and community participation in crime prevention through strong synergy among security agencies, traditional institutions, local authorities, and vigilantes.

Commissioner of Police laments rising deforestation in Jigawa

Accurate monitoring of tropical deforestation is critical for climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable land management. However, many remote sensing approaches overlook seasonal variability, which can significantly affect classification accuracy in humid tropical environments due to phenological changes and atmospheric conditions. To address this limitation, this study proposes the Deep Learning Spatio-Temporal Multi-Temporal Degradation (DL-SMTD) framework, which explicitly incorporates seasonal dynamics while integrating multi-sensor satellite data. The framework combines high-resolution Planet NICFI optical imagery and Sentinel-1 SAR data to improve the detection of deforestation and forest degradation. Two models were developed and compared: a deep learning U-Net architecture and a traditional Random Forest (RF) classifier. Both models were trained and evaluated using labeled image tiles (256 × 256 pixels) derived from Nigeria's Cross River tropical rainforest, covering six bi-annual seasonal composites between 2020 and 2023. Each composite contains seven spectral features, including four optical bands from Planet NICFI (blue, green, red, and near-infrared) and three SAR features from Sentinel-1 (VV, VH, and VV/VH). Model performance was evaluated using different input configurations, including single-sensor datasets and multi-sensor data fusion. Results indicate that integrating optical and SAR data improves classification performance compared with single-sensor approaches. The U-Net model using fused Planet and SAR data achieved an overall accuracy of 0.93 and an Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.90, while the RF model achieved 0.92 accuracy and 0.89 IoU with the same input configuration. Building on these results, the proposed DL-SMTD framework incorporates temporal consistency constraints and degradation detection rules to account for seasonal variability, further improving performance to 0.98 overall accuracy and 0.91 IoU. Beyond classification, DL-SMTD generates multi-temporal forest change products, including degradation frequency, first degradation occurrence, and transition maps, enabling detailed spatio-temporal analysis of forest disturbance dynamics. By explicitly modeling seasonal variation and leveraging the complementary strengths of optical and radar observations, the proposed framework provides more robust and consistent deforestation detection than conventional single-sensor or static classification approaches. The DL-SMTD framework offers a scalable and reliable tool for tropical forest monitoring and supports REDD+ implementation, conservation planning, and near real-time forest disturbance detection in data-limited tropical regions.
Graphical Abstract
The graphical abstract illustrates the workflow and key components of the DL-SMTD framework for accurate monitoring of tropical deforestation. On the left, multi-sensor satellite inputs are shown, including high-resolution Planet NICFI optical imagery and Sentinel-1 SAR bands (VV, VH, VV/VH), which are combined to capture complementary spectral and structural information. These inputs are organized into six bi-annual seasonal composites spanning 2020–2023, highlighting the integration of temporal dynamics to account for seasonal variation in tropical rainforests. In the center, two classification approaches are depicted: a deep learning U-Net architecture and a traditional Random Forest (RF) model, both trained on labeled image tiles of 256 × 256 pixels. The fusion of optical and radar data is represented as a converging pipeline, emphasizing how combining multiple data sources enhances feature representation for improved detection of deforestation and forest degradation. The outputs of the DL-SMTD framework are visualized, including maps of deforestation, degradation frequency, first degradation occurrence, and transitions over time, enabling detailed spatio-temporal analysis. Key performance metrics, such as overall accuracy and Intersection over Union (IoU), are highlighted to demonstrate the superior results achieved with the fused U-Net model and the further improvement provided by the full DL-SMTD framework. The graphical abstract conveys the significance of integrating multi-sensor and multi-temporal data with deep learning to capture seasonal variability, improve classification accuracy, and provide actionable insights for conservation, REDD+ implementation, and sustainable land management in tropical regions. It underscores the framework's potential as a scalable, reliable tool for real-time monitoring of forest disturbances in data-limited environments.

Accurate monitoring of tropical deforestation is critical for climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable land management. However, many remote sensing approaches overlook…

Mapping Deforestation Dynamics Using a Multi-Sensor Spatio-Temporal Deep Learning Framework - Earth Systems and Environment

Click to expand Image
Cattle walk along an illegally deforested area in an extractive reserve near Jaci-Parana, Rondonia state, Brazil, July 12, 2023.
© 2023 Andre Penner/AP Photo
(Brussels) – The European Commission's announcement that it would not initiate a process to further amend the text of its milestone anti-deforestation regulation paves the way for it to be implemented by the end of 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. However, at the same time, the Commission has proposed to exclude leather from the list of products covered by the regulation, which would create a major loophole.
'It is hard to overstate the transformative effect that the prospect of the regulation has had in hotspots for deforestation and rights abuses,' said Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior environment researcher at Human Rights Watch. 'For this momentum to continue, we need to see robust implementation, and no unjustifiable exclusions.'
In May 2023, the EU adopted the Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR), which requires EU-based companies to ensure that their imports and exports are deforestation-free and are not tainted by being linked to human rights abuses. The regulation applies to seven commodities—wood, palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and cattle—and many products derived from these commodities, such as leather in the case of cattle. To trim obligations for businesses, EU institutions have twice delayed the date by which companies have to start complying and amended the text. The deadline for compliance is now December.
The prospect of implementing the regulation has already prompted positive reforms in tropical forest countries. In Malaysian Borneo, for example, the state of Sarawak announced a moratorium in February 2025 on new permits for oil palm plantations, citing pressure from EU regulations and following a campaign by Human Rights Watch, Indigenous organizations SAVE Rivers and KERUAN, and the international groups Bruno Manser Fonds and Borneo Project.
In Brazil's state of Pará, government officials told Human Rights Watch that their decision to pioneer the first individual cattle traceability system in the Brazilian Amazon was to get ahead of the European regulation requirements, as well as to anticipate similar requirements from Asian markets.
Some member states' representatives, including from Austria, Germany, and Italy, had sought an amendment to the regulation to exclude jurisdictions with low deforestation rates. However, on May 4, the European Commission said it would not reopen the core text of the regulation for additional amendments. This is a positive development, and the European Council and Parliament should also commit to preserving the integrity of this milestone legislation and work promptly towards its robust implementation, Human Rights Watch said. Last year, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest, an area roughly the size of Denmark, according to Global Forest Watch.
Also on May 4, the European Commission opened for public consultation a draft delegated act that would change the list of products covered by the regulation. The consultation is open through June 1. The draft, published following extensive public lobbying by leather industry groups, proposes to exclude leather. Excluding leather from the scope of the regulation would be inconsistent because it would mean that beef from cows raised on illegally deforested land would be excluded from the EU market but leather from those same cows would not be, Human Rights Watch said. The Commission should keep leather within scope of the regulation, the organization said.
In its October 2025 report 'Tainted,' Human Rights Watch found that illegal cattle ranching has devastated the territories of small farmers and Indigenous peoples in Pará. Between 2020 and 2025, JBS, the world's largest meat company, may have exported both beef and leather hides from cattle sourced from illegal ranches in this region to the European Union. JBS said in August 2025 that it would start tracking indirect suppliers in January 2026, but has not replied since to Human Rights Watch queries about implementation of its system. Italy is by far the largest importer of Brazilian hides in the EU. Italian policy makers and industry groups have also pressed for excluding leather.
'It would be absurd to exclude leather from an anti-deforestation law since most of the world's deforestation is driven by cattle ranching and this industry also produces leather,' said Téllez Chávez. 'This supply chain is plagued by allegations of violence against activists, encroachment on Indigenous territories and small-holders, and laundering of illegal assets.'

The European Commission's announcement that it would not initiate a process to further amend the text of its milestone anti-deforestation regulation paves the way for it to be implemented by the end…

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next officia…

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 656 square miles, while degradation affected about 1,706 square miles.
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 29.7 million acres of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 8.4 million acres are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 42 million acres of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

SAO PAULO — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

FILE - A wildfire burns in the Amazon in the municipality of Manaquiri in Brazil's Amazonas state, Sept. 6, 2023.
Edmar Barros/AP
FILE - Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in the rural municipality of Careiro Castanho, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2023.
Edmar Barros/AP
FILE - A wildfire consumes land recently deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020.
Andre Penner/AP
FILE - Fire brigade members work to put out a wildfire in Apui, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sept. 21, 2022.
Edmar Barros/AP
SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
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Article continues below this ad
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this major accomplishment, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, is outpacing deforestation. The Amazon plays a crucial part in regulating the global climate by storing carbon dioxide. El Nino events worsen conditions, leading to severe wildfires and increased degradation. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares of native forest by 2030, which will help combat degradation. However, legislation being considered by Congress could hinder environmental enforcement by limiting the use of satellite monitoring to impose sanctions on illegal deforestation.

Deforestation coupled with climate change is rapidly pushing the Amazon Rainforest toward a perilous tipping point that could come much sooner than previously thought. That's the warning from a new paper, published in Nature, which determined that deforestation of 22-28% of the rainforest, combined with 1.5-1.9° Celsius
"
This critical [Amazon] threshold could be reached as early as the 2040s,
"

Deforestation coupled with climate change is rapidly pushing the Amazon Rainforest toward a perilous tipping point that could come much sooner than previously thought. That's the warning from a new…

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Copyright
© 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOAAssociated Press SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and…

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast-tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real-time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012 | WWJ Newsradio 950

An aerial view shows a deforested plot of the Amazon during a Greenpeace flyover near Cachoeira do Piria, state of Para, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab
BRASILIA, May 12 (Reuters) - Brazil's government decided on Tuesday to delay the implementation of a rule requiring banks to ​use satellite imagery to check whether rural loan applicants ‌had engaged in deforestation before approving subsidized public credit.
The rule had faced strong opposition from the powerful farm sector, with Brazil's Agriculture Ministry itself having asked for ​the measure to be postponed or scrapped.
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At an extraordinary ​meeting on Tuesday, Brazil's National Monetary Council (CMN), the country's top ⁠economic policymaking body, decided that the rule - which took effect ​in April for rural properties larger than four fiscal modules, a ​land measurement unit used in Brazil - will now only apply from January 2027 for properties larger than 15 fiscal modules.
For areas between four and 15 ​fiscal modules, the verification requirement will only take effect in July ​2027, while for smaller properties of up to four fiscal modules, the rule ‌will ⁠now come into force in January 2028, compared with the previous deadline of January 2027.
The Finance Ministry, whose chief sits on the CMN alongside the planning minister and the central bank governor, ​said farmers whose ​credit applications were ⁠rejected while the rule was in force will be allowed to resubmit them.
The ministry said the ​delay would allow for procedural improvements by the agencies ​involved ⁠in the process and for helping farmers prepare.
Supporters of the rule argued the government needed more tools in its anti-deforestation arsenal. As on-the-ground ⁠enforcement ​has become more difficult, the measure was ​designed to curb deforestation by restricting access to billions of dollars in subsidized public ​credit.
Reporting by Marcela Ayres; Editing by Nia Williams and Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

Brazil's government decided on Tuesday to delay the implementation of a rule requiring banks to ​use satellite imagery to check whether rural loan applicants ‌had engaged in deforestation before approving subsidized public credit.

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012. Despite gains in keeping forest […]

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
___
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

By May Angel
LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) – The amount of Ivory Coast cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top ​cocoa grower will manage to comply with the EU's looming anti-deforestation ‌law, according to a new analysis by the non-profit Trase.
From December the law will require that EU importers of commodities and related goods prove their products weren't grown on deforested land by, among other measures, tracing their raw materials back to the plot on which they ‌were ​grown.
According to Trase, only 48% of Ivory Coast's 2024 ⁠cocoa exports can be traced ⁠back to the farming cooperatives that grew the beans, largely because the rest of the supply chain is 'indirect' or comprised of several intermediaries.
The figures have not changed much since the non-profit's prior analysis published two years ago.
'The ​prevalence of indirect supplies of cocoa and the resulting lack of visibility into its origins makes it very difficult for companies to address issues such ⁠as deforestation or child labour,' said Trase.
The ⁠EUDR has been hailed as a landmark in the fight ​against climate change but Brussels, which has twice delayed implementing the law, remains under ​pressure to delay it further and scale it back.
EU trade partners ‌including Brazil, Indonesia and, crucially, the U.S., say complying with the law is cumbersome and costly. As part of its trade deal with President Donald Trump, the EU committed to working to address U.S. concerns over the law.
Ivory Coast grows ⁠just over a third of the world's cocoa and the EU is its largest trading partner, importing 66% of the country's beans.
In order to help meet the EU ⁠regulations, Ivory Coast has ‌opted for a digitalised sales and purchasing system to ⁠facilitate verification.
Between 2000 and 2024, 79% of the West African ​nation's ‌forests were lost or degraded, according to Trase, with cocoa ​expansion accounting ⁠for nearly half of forest loss during much of the period.
'Although overall rates of deforestation in Côte d'Ivoire have declined over the last decade, this is partly due to the limited amount of forest remaining,' said the non-profit.
Deforestation is the second leading cause of climate change after the burning of fossil fuels.

By May Angel LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The amount of Ivory Coast cocoa that can be traced back to where it was grown remains at just under half, calling into question how the world's top ​cocoa…

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Bolivia's New Land Reform Law Sparks Fears of Deforestation and Indigenous Displacement
A controversial land reform law in Bolivia intended to help small farmers access credit has ignited widespread protests, with environmental groups warning it could backfire by enabling large agribusinesses to acquire rural lands and accelerate deforestation.
The legislation, passed in April, allows farmers to reclassify their 'small' properties as 'medium' properties, enabling them to use their land as collateral for bank loans and business development. However, this reclassification strips away crucial legal protections that previously prevented land seizure and forced sales. Critics argue this creates an opportunity for large-scale agricultural operations to more easily purchase rural properties from vulnerable farmers.
Opposition has been particularly fierce in the Santa Cruz and Beni departments, regions already experiencing some of South America's highest deforestation rates due to expanding soy cultivation and cattle ranching. A coalition of eleven environmental and land development organizations warned that the law weakens existing agrarian institutions and threatens the territorial foundation of rural communities.
Under Bolivia's current land classification system, 'small' properties are considered family patrimony for subsistence rather than economic assets, making them exempt from seizure or division. 'Medium' properties, by contrast, can be mortgaged, sold, and transferred but lack these protective safeguards. Environmental advocates fear that Indigenous and rural families, pressured by economic hardship, may reclassify their lands only to lose them later to agribusiness expansion, potentially accelerating habitat destruction in critical ecosystems.

A controversial land reform law in Bolivia intended to help small farmers access credit has ignited widespread protests, with environmental groups warning it could backfire by enabling large…

Bolivia's New Land Reform Law Sparks Fears of Deforestation and Indigenous Displacement

(Brussels) - The European Commission 's announcement that it would not initiate a process to further amend the text of its milestone anti-deforestation regulation paves the way for it to be implemented by the end of 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. However, at the same time, the Commission has proposed to exclude leather from the list of products covered by the regulation, which would create a major loophole.
"It is hard to overstate the transformative effect that the prospect of the regulation has had in hotspots for deforestation and rights abuses," said Luciana Tellez Chavez, senior environment researcher at Human Rights Watch. "For this momentum to continue, we need to see robust implementation, and no unjustifiable exclusions."
In May 2023, the EU adopted the Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR), which requires EU-based companies to ensure that their imports and exports are deforestation-free and are not tainted by being linked to human rights abuses. The regulation applies to seven commodities-wood, palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and cattle-and many products derived from these commodities, such as leather in the case of cattle. To trim obligations for businesses, EU institutions have twice delayed the date by which companies have to start complying and amended the text. The deadline for compliance is now December.
The prospect of implementing the regulation has already prompted positive reforms in tropical forest countries. In Malaysian Borneo, for example, the state of Sarawak announced a moratorium in February 2025 on new permits for oil palm plantations, citing pressure from EU regulations and following a campaign by Human Rights Watch, Indigenous organizations SAVE Rivers and KERUAN, and the international groups Bruno Manser Fonds and Borneo Project.
In Brazil's state of Para, government officials told Human Rights Watch that their decision to pioneer the first individual cattle traceability system in the Brazilian Amazon was to get ahead of the European regulation requirements, as well as to anticipate similar requirements from Asian markets.
Some member states' representatives, including from Austria, Germany, and Italy, had sought an amendment to the regulation to exclude jurisdictions with low deforestation rates. However, on May 4, the European Commission said it would not reopen the core text of the regulation for additional amendments. This is a positive development, and the European Council and Parliament should also commit to preserving the integrity of this milestone legislation and work promptly towards its robust implementation, Human Rights Watch said. Last year, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest, an area roughly the size of Denmark, according to Global Forest Watch.
Also on May 4, the European Commission opened for public consultation a draft delegated act that would change the list of products covered by the regulation. The consultation is open through June 1. The draft, published following extensive public lobbying by leather industry groups, proposes to exclude leather. Excluding leather from the scope of the regulation would be inconsistent because it would mean that beef from cows raised on illegally deforested land would be excluded from the EU market but leather from those same cows would not be, Human Rights Watch said. The Commission should keep leather within scope of the regulation, the organization said.
In its October 2025 report " Tainted," Human Rights Watch found that illegal cattle ranching has devastated the territories of small farmers and Indigenous peoples in Para. Between 2020 and 2025, JBS, the world's largest meat company, may have exported both beef and leather hides from cattle sourced from illegal ranches in this region to the European Union. JBS said in August 2025 that it would start tracking indirect suppliers in January 2026, but has not replied since to Human Rights Watch queries about implementation of its system. Italy is by far the largest importer of Brazilian hides in the EU. Italian policy makers and industry groups have also pressed for excluding leather.
"It would be absurd to exclude leather from an anti-deforestation law since most of the world's deforestation is driven by cattle ranching and this industry also produces leather," said Tellez Chavez. "This supply chain is plagued by allegations of violence against activists, encroachment on Indigenous territories and small-holders, and laundering of illegal assets."

Click to expand Image Cattle walk along an illegally deforested area in an extractive reserve near J

A gold-fueled mining rush scars Brazil's Amazon, spiking deforestation and mercury risks (Photo credit: AP)
Most deforestation from mining is illegal, group says
Enforcement is often a 'cat-and-mouse' game
Gold has driven mercury contamination
Mining an increasing concern among environmentalists and Indigenous
SAO PAULO: The surge in gold prices in recent years has fueled a renewed mining rush in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, accelerating deforestation in protected areas and driving mercury contamination to hazardous levels, officials and experts say.A study released Tuesday by the nongovernmental organization Amazon Conservation, in partnership with Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Socioambiental, found illegal mining sites drove clear-cutting inside three conservation areas in the Xingu region, one of the world's largest expanses of protected forest, spanning the states of Para and Mato Grosso. The analysis combined satellite imagery with ground research.The Terra do Meio Ecological Station recorded its first cases of illegal mining in September 2024. By the end of 2025, mining-related deforestation there had spread to 30 hectares (74 acres). At the Altamira National Forest, illegal mining accumulated 832 hectares (2,056 acres) of deforestation between 2016 and September 2025. A new mining front that opened in 2024 expanded to 36 hectares (89 acres) by October 2025, accounting for nearly half the mining-related deforestation recorded in the unit during that year.Satellite monitoring also detected a clandestine airstrip used by illegal miners at the Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve last year. Illegal mining in the reserve grew from 2 hectares (5 acres) to at least 26.8 hectares (66 acres) in 2025.In 2023, Amazon Conservation teamed up with Earth Genome and the Pulitzer Center to develop the Amazon Mining Watch, a platform that uses satellite imagery to track mining across the Amazon since 2018. About 496,000 hectares (1,225,640 acres) of rainforest have been cleared for mining since then, including approximately 223,000 hectares (551,045 acres) in the Brazilian Amazon. Amazon Conservation estimates that 80% of mining-related deforestation in Brazil carries a high risk of taking place illegally.Mining remains a relatively small driver of deforestation in Brazil, where forest loss is largely linked to agribusiness expansion. In 2025, for example, some 579,600 hectares (1.432 million acres) of the Brazilian Amazon were cleared, according to official data. About 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) were related to mining, according to the Mining Watch."What makes mining particularly problematic is that it targets protected areas and Indigenous territories," said Matt Finer, director of Amazon Conservation's Monitoring of the Andes Amazon program.Protecting Indigenous territories is widely seen as an effective way to curb deforestation in the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest and a key regulator of global climate. Researchers warn that continued forest loss could accelerate global warming.In 2023, Brazilian authorities launched a major crackdown on illegal gold mining in the Yanomami Indigenous territory in Roraima state, along the border with Venezuela, after a surge led to a humanitarian and health crisis. Annual growth in newly mined areas there fell sharply after that year, according to Amazon Conservation data. Although mining has not been fully eliminated, nearly all deforestation inside the Yanomami territory - about 5,500 hectares (13,590 acres) - had taken place by 2023.Still, localized enforcement has not curbed illegal mining across the Amazon. When authorities destroy dredges and equipment in one region, miners often relocate or resume operations once officials leave. Federal prosecutor Andre Luiz Porreca, who investigates illegal mining in the western Brazilian Amazon, described enforcement as a "cat-and-mouse game.""Last year, I took part in an operation that destroyed more than 500 dredges on an Indigenous land," Porreca said. "The following week, Indigenous people showed me photos proving the miners had already returned."Porreca said illegal gold mining is financed by Brazil's largest criminal organizations, including the Red Command and the First Capital Command, or PCC, which operate in about a third of the cities in the Brazilian Amazon. "They have the money to bankroll these operations. Some dredges cost as much as 15 million reais."While enforcement eased pressure in Yanomami territory, illegal mining has intensified elsewhere, particularly across Indigenous lands in the Xingu River basin. The most critical situation is on the Kayapo Indigenous land, where roughly 7,940 hectares (19,620 acres) of rainforest have been cleared by illegal mining, the largest such area in the Brazilian Amazon.Record-breaking gold prices, driven largely by investor demand for safe assets amid rising global risks, have provided a strong incentive for illegal mining."It's basic market logic. With more buyers, there are more people exploiting gold," Porreca said. He said Brazil's mineral export control system remains weak, allowing laundering schemes that give illicit gold the appearance of legality.Environmental damage extends beyond deforestation. Illegal mining operations dump mercury into rivers, contaminating waterways and accumulating in fish consumed by riverine and Indigenous communities.In April, Porreca submitted a report to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights describing widespread mercury contamination in the Amazon. The report cited a study by Fiocruz, a state-run research institution, which found that 21.3% of fish sold in public markets across the Amazon exceeded mercury limits set by the World Health Organization. Children ages 2 to 4 were consuming mercury at levels up to 31 times higher than the recommended maximum.Under Brazilian law, mining is prohibited on Indigenous lands. The Ministry of Indigenous peoples said in a statement that combating illegal mining on Indigenous lands is a priority of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration. The ministry said mining invasions are sustained by criminal networks and confronting them requires dismantling those economic and logistics chains.The Ministry of Environment said mercury contamination from illegal gold mining remains a persistent problem in the Amazon, adding that it is expanding scientific monitoring while supporting enforcement efforts.Brazil's Federal Police did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Rest of World News: A surge in gold prices has triggered illegal mining in Brazil's Amazon, leading to rampant deforestation and severe mercury pollution affecting local communities. Experts warn of a…

Amazon: Brazil's Amazon Faces Mining Crisis: Deforestation and Mercury Contamination Escalate

The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are…

The application period is now open for residents to fill the DeForest Village Board's current vacancy. The deadline to apply is Friday, June 5 at 2 p.m.
The eventual appointee will round out the board's seven members, after going several months below full strength following the resignation of Jane Cahill Wolfgram.
Residents can apply for the role by visiting the village's website and navigating to the 'Village Trustee Vacancy' page, www.deforestwi.gov/566/village-trustee-vacancy.
Those who apply are being asked to provide personal and professional information, in addition to any prior board or community involvement experience.
Three 500-word maximum essay questions make up a key part of the application. The following questions were selected by current DeForest trustees, and developed by village staff:
Following the application period, village trustees will rank each of the submitted candidates at their meeting on Tuesday, June 16.
A composite score using their rankings will then determine the five candidates selected to move on to an in-person interview forum at a special village board meeting on Tuesday, June 30.
DeForest trustees would then choose three additional questions to ask each of the five finalists on June 30 and would similarly rank their preferred candidates via a secret vote.
Village staff would tally those results and announce the top vote-getter, resulting in an appointment that same evening if the board were reach a majority agreement on the candidate.
If a tie were to occur, trustees would revote on the tied candidates. If the selected candidate fails to receive the necessary majority vote on their final appointment, the seat would remain vacant unless a different selection process is identified.
The village board conducted a similar process when appointing current Trustee Brad Cords in October, 2025 to serve the remainder of Rebecca Witherspoon's term, which expires in 2027.
Village of DeForest appoints new board trustee
Trustees and village staff have honed the timeline and structure of this process over the course the past several months.
The village does not have an established method for filling any board vacancies, which has contributed to the somewhat lengthy process in determining how to go about the current situation.
The board continued this discussion on May 5, looking further ahead to memorialize a solution into policy for the village.
Ten DeForest residents were interviewed to fill the board's vacancy left by Rebecca Witherspoon in 2025. The process has become somewhat of the agreed upon standard, and could soon become official village policy.
Board members instructed Village Administrator Bill Chang to return at a future meeting with a policy to finalize the process.
They suggested that the policy closely resemble the steps they have taken for Cords' appointment, and current President Colleen Little's appointment from the board to fill Cahill Wolfgram's vacancy.
Trustee Little appointed as new DeForest Village President
Trustee vacancies would be filled via appointment of a community member not on the board, following an application and interview process.
Meanwhile, the vacancy of village president is set to be filled through an appointment of an existing board member for the remainder of the position's term. But, a provision that the appointment be temporary if it occurs within 30 days of an election was also requested.
Residents can expect formal language of the policy to be brought forward and voted upon at a future village board meeting.

Applications are now open for residents to fill the DeForest Village Board's current vacancy.

DeForest opens village board vacancy applications

In a groundbreaking new study set to reshape the understanding of environmental dynamics in the Amazon Basin, researchers reveal a compelling link between rising global temperatures and the accelerating impact of deforestation on rainfall patterns in the southern Amazon. This convergence of climate change and land-use alteration heralds a precarious future for one of the planet's most vital ecosystems, where rainfall sensitivity to forest loss intensifies with warming, threatening biodiversity, agriculture, and local livelihoods.
Central to this research is the recognition that the Amazon's hydrological cycle is finely balanced, with forest cover playing an indispensable role in generating and sustaining regional precipitation. Trees draw moisture from the soil and release it into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration, aiding in cloud formation and rainfall. However, deforestation disrupts this cycle by reducing the capacity of the forest to recycle water, and this disruption becomes markedly more severe as climate warming reduces baseline moisture availability.
Traditionally, land regulations have limited deforestation to no more than 20% of any landholding in the Amazon basin. Yet, the study's simulations demonstrate that this threshold is no longer sufficient to maintain hydrological stability, especially under projected warming scenarios. In the worst-case scenario examined, the researchers argue that limiting deforestation to 10% of land area or less may be critical to sustaining current rainfall levels, particularly over extensive areas exceeding 210 square kilometers.
The implications for agriculture, specifically soybean cultivation, are dire. Declines in annual rainfall as minimal as 4% could translate into yield reductions of up to 8%, directly impacting the profitability and viability of farming in the region. This forms a distressing feedback loop wherein farming drives deforestation, which then undermines the rainfall necessary for farming itself, exacerbating local economic and environmental vulnerabilities.
A nuanced discovery within the study is the scale-dependent nature of deforestation's impact on rainfall. Small-scale deforestation can paradoxically enhance rain production. When forest patches are broken up in limited areas, the exposed land heats up, causing moisture from surrounding trees to rise and condense, temporarily increasing precipitation. However, when deforestation crosses a critical spatial threshold, the lack of integrated forest moisture supply leads to sharp rainfall declines, a tipping point that shifts depending on climate conditions.
Using advanced computational weather simulation models, the research team analyzed deforestation and climate change scenarios concentrated on a southern Amazon agricultural hotspot, an area exemplifying rapid forest loss due to cropland and pasture expansion. Their models track how deforestation percentages and warming scenarios interplay to modulate rainfall outcomes over decades, providing unprecedented predictive insights.
Under current climate conditions circa 2005–2014, rainfall reductions only become discernible when about half of the landmass is deforested, with a projected 1.7% decrease in precipitation by 2050 in these simulations. However, introducing a scenario with moderate emissions, this critical deforestation threshold lowers to 45%, pushing annual rainfall declines up to nearly 14% by the mid-century mark. Even more alarming, in a high-emission future, only a mere 10% of deforestation suffices to initiate substantial rainfall drops, up to 11%, signaling heightened vulnerability.
The mechanistic explanation offered by the research points to climate change-induced warming and drying of the air, which diminishes the atmospheric moisture reservoir available for recycling. As this moisture becomes scarcer, the role played by forests in pumping water vapor into the atmosphere becomes increasingly vital, meaning any further loss of forest cover incurs amplified hydrological penalties. Notably, the initial rainfall boost seen with limited deforestation diminishes as the climate warms, stripping away any intermediate benefits previously observed.
These results provoke urgent calls for enhanced forest conservation measures. The study's lead author underscores the critical necessity for producers and policymakers to broaden their understanding of ecosystem dynamics and integrate forest preservation within agricultural planning. This education is key to aligning economic incentives with sustainable environmental stewardship and breaking the destructive cycle threatening both local economies and global biodiversity.
The research advocates for alternative land management strategies, especially agroforestry systems that weave native tree species within crop fields to better retain moisture and reduce heat accumulation. Such ecological integration offers a pathway to elevating productivity on already deforested land while mitigating further rainfall decline. In this vision, intensification and ecosystem harmony replace deforestation-driven expansion as strategies for agricultural resilience.
Underlying the study is a sophisticated integration of climate modeling and landscape-scale analysis, utilizing state-of-the-art computational simulation tools to capture the complex interactions between land cover, atmospheric moisture, and temperature. By explicitly modeling varying scales of deforestation and climate scenarios, the team provides concrete, actionable thresholds that can guide policy and conservation frameworks in a rapidly changing environmental context.
Ultimately, the study paints a sobering picture of a region where climate change and deforestation synergistically compromise hydrological stability. The southern Amazon, a linchpin for global carbon cycling and biodiversity, faces amplified rainfall sensitivity that could cascade into ecological degradation and economic hardship if strategies don't evolve. This research stands as a clarion call to reimagine how humanity values and manages forest ecosystems amid a warming planet.
As this pivotal study appears in Geophysical Research Letters, it offers an essential scientific foundation for environmental decision-making. It underscores the necessity of aligning forest protection with climate mitigation efforts to avoid crossing critical tipping points that could irreversibly alter Amazonian rainfall regimes and the livelihoods they sustain. The future of the Amazon hinges on integrating ecological priorities with agricultural development, a feat demanding urgent commitment and innovation.
Subject of Research: Impact of climate change on rainfall sensitivity to deforestation in the southern Amazon.
Article Title: Climate change amplifies rainfall sensitivity to deforestation in the Southern Amazon.
News Publication Date: 7-May-2026.
Web References:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL119000
Keywords: Amazon rainforest, climate change, deforestation, rainfall sensitivity, hydrological cycle, agroforestry, computational modeling, land use, biodiversity loss, agricultural impact, ecosystem services, tipping points.

In a groundbreaking new study set to reshape the understanding of environmental dynamics in the Amazon Basin, researchers reveal a compelling link between rising global temperatures and the

Deforestation Reduces Amazon Rainfall, While Climate Change Accelerates the

The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012. Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40 per cent of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires. ''Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,'' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank. While the Amazon is still a carbon sink - that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide - it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs. Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10 per cent and 47 per cent of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift. Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest =============================== The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk - more than 60 per cent - meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest. In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year. However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometres, while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometres. The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation - complete clear-cutting - and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost. During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fuelled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation. The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed. A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder. Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect. This new scenario requires the government to prioritise forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery. Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast-tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation. Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring ================================== If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement. Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defence. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorised. IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former president Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring. Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved. If approved, the project would be ''a major environmental setback,'' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. ''In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'' Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometre of the rainforest. Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season ====================================== In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real-time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures. ''The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,'' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state. ''The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,'' she added. In 2024, a major wildfire season fuelled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans. Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire. To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought. The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions - and time - to germinate and grow. ''The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,'' Maracahipes said. ''And it has to be now.''
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazils official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last…

Despite gains combating deforestation in Brazil's Amazon, forest degradation is looming threat

SAO PAULO (AP) — The administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva frequently touts how it has sharply slowed deforestation in the Amazon, and indeed it has. When the next official annual numbers are released in October, the deforestation rate is expected to be the lowest since 2012.
Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk. Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.
'Degradation is slower and more silent. It is like a chronic condition,' said Taciana Stec, a climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank.
While the Amazon is still a carbon sink — that is, it absorbs a vast amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide — it could reach a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. At that stage, the forest could emit more CO2 than it absorbs.
Scientists say repeated stress could trigger a regional or biome-wide collapse. A 2024 study published in Nature estimated that by 2050, between 10% and 47% of the Amazon could be pushed into conditions capable of triggering such a critical shift.
Degradation chronically weakens the rainforest
The Amazon is spread across nine countries in South America. Brazil has by far the largest chunk — more than 60% — meaning what happens in this section can impact the rest of forest.
In Brazil, the official annual deforestation rate covers the period from August of the previous year to July of the current year. Preliminary data based on DETER, Brazil's official satellite-based system that provides real-time alerts, show that both deforestation and forest degradation have significantly declined since last year.
However, degradation continues to outpace deforestation. From August 2025 through April 2026, deforestation alerts covered nearly 1,700 square kilometers (656 square miles), while degradation affected about 4,420 square kilometers (1,706 square miles).
The DETER system provides environmental authorities with daily alerts of ongoing deforestation — complete clear-cutting — and degradation, which are areas affected by human activity where soil is exposed but the forest has not yet been fully lost.
During the 2023 and 2024 El Nino, temperatures rose 2 to 4 Celsius (3.5 to 7 Fahrenheit) above the forest's historical average. Associated with severe drought, the heat fueled the Amazon's worst wildfires in two decades, and forest degradation increased at a rate roughly three times greater than the decline in deforestation.
The combined effect was a net loss of rainforest that undermined the deforestation progress, a study by Guilherme Mataveli, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, showed.
A degraded rainforest may still be standing, but it can no longer fully support the ecosystem. That weakness could be compounded by external factors like El Nino. For example, if the Amazon were a human patient with a chronic illness, El Nino would strike like a flu, triggering a fever that leaves the body weaker and more vulnerable. Two years later, the flu returns. But this time, the patient has not fully recovered. The fever burns hotter, and the illness hits harder.
Assessing a forest in this state is relatively new to scientists, as identifying degradation through satellite images is more complex than tree-cutting. But they have increasingly warned about its prolonged and dangerous effect.
This new scenario requires the government to prioritize forest restoration, experts say. Brazil plans to restore 12 million hectares (29.7 million acres) of native Amazon forest by 2030, as part of the commitment it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. According to the Environment Ministry, 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) are already undergoing recovery.
Above all, the country must continue its efforts to curb deforestation, experts say. But a fast‑tracked bill in Congress threatens the main tool that enabled Brazil curb deforestation.
Proposal would make key change in forest monitoring
If approved, the legislation, proposed by lawmaker Lucio Mosquini, would prohibit IBAMA, Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, from imposing sanctions on landowners for illegal deforestation based solely on satellite monitoring, a pillar of the country's environmental enforcement.
Mosquini said satellite-based sanctions harm farmers because they are not given a chance to mount a defense. Authorities, however, say farmers can challenge the sanction within 20 days and have it overturned if they can show the deforestation was authorized.
IBAMA first began relying on satellite data in 2016 to complement field inspections and support deforestation control in remote areas. Former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration halted the policy in 2019 as part of its environmental deregulation efforts, which drove Amazon deforestation rates to a 15-year high in 2021. Under Lula, who returned to office in 2023 after previously being president between 2003-2010, the environmental agency resumed remote monitoring.
Since March, the proposal has been set for an eventual vote by Congress' lower chamber. If it passes, it would move to the Senate. Since agribusiness is the country's most powerful economic sector and most influential in Congress, political experts expect it to be approved.
If approved, the project would be 'a major environmental setback,' Jair Schmitt, IBAMA's president, told The Associated Press. 'In effect, you end up encouraging environmental offenders and unfair competition.'
Satellite technology supports environmental enforcement much as speed cameras assist traffic authorities, Schmitt said. It would be impossible for a city to deploy a guard to every corner. Likewise, the federal government cannot station agents to every on every square kilometer of the rainforest.
Authorities on high alert with prospect of bad wildfire season
In March, the government announced the hiring of 4,600 firefighters and launched real‑time monitoring of potential fire outbreaks. Schmitt, the IBAMA president, said authorities have identified rural properties at high fire risk by combining historical heat-spot data with deforestation and weather records. Some landowners are now being notified and ordered to adopt preventive measures.
'The situation this year is worrying. We're still in the rainy season, and we've already recorded two fires in April,' said Tainan Kumaruara, a member of the Indigenous volunteer Guardioes Kumaruara fire brigade, in the Kumaruara Indigenous land in Para state.
'The forest is different from what it was 10 years ago. It's much drier. The trees no longer behave as they did,' she added.
In 2024, a major wildfire season fueled by severe drought affected more than 17 million hectares (42 million acres) of rainforest, according to MapBiomas, a nonprofit that tracks land use. Most wildfires in the Amazon are not natural but rather started by humans.
Amid the warnings, a study publish in April by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences added more evidence about how the Amazon recovers from fire.
To study long-term effects, for 20 years Leandro Maracahipes, a Yale University researcher supported by the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Serrapilheira, set controlled fires at a research farm in the Amazon that was also exposed to drought.
The study found that after frequent wildfires, the forest did not completely disappear or transform into savanna, or widespread grassland, contrary to what scientific models had predicted. It remained a rainforest but degraded, with more clearings and vulnerability, lacking Amazon niche species that depend on dense cover and specific conditions — and time — to germinate and grow.
'The forest is resilient, but our message is that we need to preserve it even more, and urgently,' Maracahipes said. 'And it has to be now.'
The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Brazil is on track to record its lowest Amazon deforestation rates since 2012. Despite this major accomplishment, experts warn that forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, is outpacing

Global Deforestation

This section is intended to collect data on the current status of global deforestation. This is accomplished through the utilization of APIs, databases, news sources, MapBuilders, and academic journals.

Global forest loss map