How did Brazil slash deforestation — and can others recreate the win?

In the midst of a “heartbreaking” climate change conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, last month, there was one strikingly positive number that was largely drowned out by the finance negotiations: Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon has decreased by 30.6% in the last year — the highest decline in nine years. “I think that when we finish 2024, overall deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon will be between 60% and 65% less than deforestation in 2022,” said Carlos Nobre, a leading climate scientist in Brazil who worked at the country’s deforestation monitoring institute for 30 years and is the architect of the Amazon 4.0 initiative, a sustainable development model for the region. Brazil’s success is helping it make the case for increased international funding and support not only for battling deforestation, but for maintaining those gains. Over the course of the next year, we will see Brazil push harder for the creation of the Tropical Forest Finance Facility, or TFFF, which would get money flowing to countries that can keep forests standing. The data comes from the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE. Its annual monitoring system, Project for Remote Deforestation Monitoring in the Brazilian Amazon, found a 30.6% decrease in deforestation between August 2023 and July 2024. Meanwhile, its real-time alert system aimed at detecting illegal deforestation activity, known as DETER, recorded a 38% decrease in alerts in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. The University of Maryland corroborated the findings and published them on the World Resource Institute’s Global Forest Watch platform, Mariana Oliveira of WRI Brasil told Devex. The decrease in deforestation measures the reduction of intentional clearing or thinning of forests rather than reforestation. These numbers do not account for degradation, which measures the health of a forest but is harder to monitor with satellite technology. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, along with his environment minister, Marina Silva, are credited with slashing deforestation rates back in 2008 when they were last in power thanks to a series of strict regulations. Two of the presidents who followed him, especially former President Jair Bolsonaro, made a concerted effort to weaken those regulations. But now that Lula and Silva are back, deforestation has plummeted again. Experts say Lula’s government simply switched the lights back on. “What we’re seeing right now to reduce deforestation is the government bringing back what they have done in the past,” Oliveira said. “But at the same time, I see that there is advancement in alternatives on how we can ensure that the forest will be maintained.” Brazil’s success is an example of a strong regulatory framework combined with a steady monitoring system that showed quick environmental results. But the road wasn’t as smooth as it sounds. Lula had to knit together a patchwork of political moves: executive orders, tax reforms, negotiations with the agribusiness lobby, and trade-offs that required him to give more funding to electoral interests rather than the environment ministry. How did they do it last time? Marina Silva, Lula’s environment minister and an icon of environmentalism worldwide, was largely responsible for designing and installing drastic policies and incentives that led the country to such successful deforestation rates. During Lula’s previous two-term presidency, the government expanded Indigenous reserves and protected areas to cover 43% of Brazil’s Amazon by the end of 2010. Indigenous communities controlled 21% of the area by that same year. The government also took a hard stance on illegal logging by seizing contraband timber and jailing perpetrators. More than 90% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is illegal, Nobre explained, and the administration’s use of DETER alerts provided the tools for real-time enforcement. Civil society picked up the slack by lobbying corporations away from the farming of Brazilian soy. A coalition led by Greenpeace demanded another moratorium on the use of slaughterhouses and beef exports on cattle raised on illegally deforested pastures. They had success when they began in 2009 with initial moratoriums aimed at reducing deforestation linked to cattle ranching, but enforcement has been inconsistent since then. As a result of these combined efforts, deforestation dropped by more than 60% between 2004 and 2007. Silva wasn’t finished: She cracked down on rising small-scale deforestation by creating a blacklist of municipalities that were the worst offenders, then temporarily suspended them from receiving logging permits and agriculture subsidies, or from selling their products. A series of laws followed, as well as a doubling of the budget for the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, or IBAMA, which is a federal agency under the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change responsible for environmental policing. When Lula’s term was up, his former chief-of-staff Dilma Rousseff took over in 2011 and largely continued his policies. But economic challenges and corruption scandals led to an impeachment and her tenure was followed by a shift to the right. Under Michel Temer and then Bolsonaro, funding for the environment ministry was cut by 71%, and a series of bills restricted environmental oversight. Bolsonaro even gave illegal land grabbers the ability to claim ownership over deforested lands. “Bolsonaro fully supported big deforestation,” Nobre said. “During his four years, not one research institute in Brazil was able to hire new scientists. It was the worst budget in the history of the country.” How are they doing it now? “Now is the time to take care of Brazil and the Brazilian people again,” Lula said during his inauguration speech at Brazil's National Congress in Brasília on Jan. 1, 2023. “It is time to bring in investments and reindustrialize Brazil, fight climate change again and put an end once and for all to the devastation of our biomes, especially our beloved Amazon.” One day later, with Silva by his side once again, he annulled decrees that permitted mining in Indigenous territories and environmentally protected regions, he started a review of prior executive orders that had diminished the role of one of Brazil’s environmental policy bodies, and he moved the Rural Environmental Registry from the agriculture ministry to the environment ministry to increase oversight. Lula’s new budget, which totaled approximately 5.3 trillion Brazilian real ($1.1 trillion), leaned heavily toward environmental protection and support for environmental agencies. He’s made some concessions to agribusiness, which is a powerful lobby in Brazilian politics. But ultimately, the government nearly doubled spending on the environment, land regulation, and land use planning between 2021 and 2023. Indigenous lands received $25 million from the public budget, a year-on-year increase of 249%, according to the Climate Policy Initiative. INPE — which experienced a 63% cut from 2010, to a record low of just 76 million reais ($15 million) in 2021 — got an influx of 92.3 million reais ($18 million) in 2022. By Feb. 8, the government had established the Permanent Interministerial Commission for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Burning in Brazil, PPCD. The commission is coordinating initiatives from 19 ministries to achieve zero deforestation by 2030 across all biomes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Enter the Amazon Fund Moving forward, as Lula continues to maneuver an increasingly divided country, he is looking to establish long-term internationally funded mechanisms to reward forest maintenance. In addition to domestic laws, Lula’s return brought international donors back to the scene. On his first day, he reactivated the Amazon Fund, which was first established in 2008 under his previous presidency and suspended under Bolsonaro in 2019. The fund, managed by the Brazilian Development Bank, supports projects reducing deforestation. Norway is its largest donor, followed by Germany. In 2018, Norway and Germany were the only funders. By 2023, the fund received a wider range of commitments. In 2024, Japan pledged USD$2.79 million to the fund, becoming the first Asian country to contribute. U.S. President Joe Biden promised a $500 million donation to the fund over five years in February, subject to Congressional approval. So far, the U.S. has delivered $50 million. With just four weeks left of his term, efforts are under way to deliver another $50 million, experts are concerned that it may not come through. How to keep the forests standing Brazil’s success story in the early 2000s inspired many others to try similar methods. Indonesia and Colombia adopted real-time satellite monitoring similar to Brazil’s DETER system and moratoriums on forest clearing and palm oil in the early 2010s. Peru developed a similar satellite system to Brazil that integrates data from multiple sources to monitor deforestation. It also expanded its network of protected areas. Mexico tried to apply some of the strict regulations and controls on illegal logging. Many have been successful. Colombia halved its primary forest loss by 49% in 2023 compared to 2022. As more countries work to decrease deforestation, Brazil is pushing for a new financial mechanism that would incentivize the conservation of tropical forests around the world with financial rewards through the Tropical Forest Finance Facility. The fund, which would ideally include capital from sovereign wealth funds, philanthropic organizations, and private entities, would pay countries based on reduced deforestation rates, and maintained or increased forest cover. TFFF would use satellite monitoring in participating nations to determine which ones have preserved their forests and reward them based on that data. The fund would be designed for a long-term — potentially 20 years — investment to ensure sustained financial support that can withstand political volatility. Supporters are hoping the fund will mobilize an initial capital of $125 billion. During the United Nations’ 16th Conference of Parties on Biodiversity, or COP16, held in Cali, Colombia, in October, five countries confirmed support for TFFF: Germany, Colombia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Norway. The hope is to launch it at COP30 in Belém. A European regulation could further incentivize a reduction in legal deforestation. The European Union Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR, which was recently delayed until 2026, will ban the import of products produced on land deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. It will also require producers to provide information on their supply chain. As it is currently written, EUDR will affect around 350 products — seven relevant commodities including oil palm, soya, wood, cocoa, coffee, cattle and rubber — and could impact about 30% of Brazil’s total exports to the EU. “We need to bring this to high-level discussions to mobilize more funds and resources to make sure that the forests will stand,” said Oliveira. “We are looking at COP30 as an opportunity to continue this conversation.