Deforestation in Brazil

Brazil once had the highest deforestation rate in the world and in 2005 still had the largest area of forest removed annually. Since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (230,000 sq mi) of the Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. In 2012, the Amazon was approximately 5.4 million square kilometres, which is only 87% of the Amazon's original state.

Rainforests have decreased in size primarily due to deforestation. Despite reductions in the rate of deforestation in the last ten years, the Amazon Rainforest will be reduced by 40% by 2030 at the current rate. Between May 2000 and August 2006, Brazil lost nearly 150,000 square kilometres of forest, an area larger than that of Greece. According to the Living Planet Report 2010, deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate, but at the CBD 9th Conference 67 ministers signed up to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020.

In the 1940s Brazil began a program of national development for the Amazon Basin. President Getúlio Vargas declared emphatically that:

The Amazon, in the impact of our will and labor, will cease to be a simple chapter in the world, and made equivalent to other great rivers, shall become a chapter in the history of human civilization. Everything which has up to now been done in Amazonas, whether in agriculture or extractive industry... must be transformed into rational exploitation.

Vargas established many government programs to begin developing his vision, including the Superintendency for the Economic Valorization of Amazonia (SPVEA) in 1953, the Superintendency for the Development of Amazonia (SUDAM) in 1966, and the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) in 1970. It was in the 1960s that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon became more widespread, chiefly from the removal of forest to make way for cattle ranching to raise national revenue during a period of high world beef prices, to eliminate hunger and to pay off international debt obligations. Extensive transportation projects, such as the Trans-Amazon Highway, were promoted in 1970, meaning that huge areas of forest would be removed for commercial purposes.

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