Fires burning the forests of Mato Grosso next to previously scorched land. Source: Planet Labs Inc.
Climate change, deregulation and global trade disputes are perilously straining Brazil’s Amazon.
Fires are raging across the country. Deforestation rates reached startling highs in July. An escalating trade dispute with the U.S. could force China to lean even more heavily on Brazil—already its top supplier of soy. And it all comes as Brazil’s far-right populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, has pledged to open up the 2-million-square-mile forest—including in protected indigenous areas—to more farming and mining.
As Brazil’s fires have renewed international concern about the Amazon, pressure is growing for Bolsonaro. He has accused—without evidence—non-governmental organizations of setting the blazes that have blanketed parts of the country in smoke. And he said figures showing a surge in tree loss last month were made up and fired the head of the government agency responsible for tracking the data.
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
Note: Data starts from August 2015.
Source: INPE
Prosecutors in Pará—a state in northern Brazil—are investigating a major fire that started on Aug. 10 along a key highway for grain transportation. The wildfire was allegedly caused by local producers, who wanted to show the president they wanted to work. Just after the so-called “day of fire,” wildfire reports jumped in the region, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, known as INPE.
Bolsonaro has dismissed European leaders’ concerns about his government’s environmental policies after Norway followed Germany and froze millions of dollars in financial aid to an Amazon rainforest preservation fund.
His latest clash with Europe involved French President Emmanuel Macron, who has said the increase in Amazon’s fires is an “international crisis” that G7 countries should discuss during their summit that begins on Aug. 24 and has threatened to block a trade deal between European Union and Mercosur countries, saying Bolsonaro lied about commitments on tackling climate change. Bolsonaro said Macron’s suggestion “evokes a misplaced colonialist mindset in the 21st century.”
Illegal farming has long eaten away at the edges of protected regions within the state of Pará. Farmers who illegally raze the forest often are not prosecuted, and a law passed in July makes it easier for them to claim legal ownership of land developed unlawfully. Bolsonaro, who was elected with massive support from rural areas, has claimed that environmental groups and regulators are an “industry of fines,” and a New York Times investigation found that his administration has not enforced laws on the books intended to preserve the Amazon.
◼ TREE COVER, 2000
◼ TREE LOSS, 2000–18
◼ GLAD TREE LOSS ALERTS, 2019
INDIGENOUS AREA
NATIONAL
PARK
◼ TREE COVER, 2000
◼ TREE LOSS, 2000–18
◼ GLAD TREE LOSS ALERTS, 2019
INDIGENOUS AREA
NATIONAL
PARK
◼ TREE COVER, 2000
◼ TREE LOSS, 2000–18
◼ GLAD TREE LOSS
ALERTS, 2019
INDIGENOUS
AREA
NATIONAL
PARK
Commodities are key drivers behind the increased pace of deforestation. An analysis of tree loss from 2001 to 2015 shows that most of the Amazon was lost to commodity-driven deforestation—or “long-term, permanent conversion of forest and shrubland to a non-forest land use such as agriculture, mining or energy infrastructure.”
FRENCH GUIANA
VENEZUELA
SURINAME
COMMODITY-DRIVEN
SHIFTING AGRICULTURE
COLOMBIA
GUYANA
FORESTRY
WILDFIRE
URBANIZATION
◼ Small- to medium-scale forest and shrubland converted for agriculture— then abandoned, allowing forest to regrow
BRAZIL
PERU
BOLIVIA
Converting rainforest to farmland can expose trees around the edges to dry conditions, making them more susceptible to wildfire
PARAGUAY
CHILE
Rio de Janeiro
Sao Paolo
Forestry in the southeast involves managing forests —allowing logging and tree regrowth
ARGENTINA
URUGUAY
FRENCH GUIANA
VENEZUELA
SURINAME
COMMODITY-DRIVEN
COLOMBIA
GUYANA
SHIFTING AGRICULTURE
FORESTRY
WILDFIRE
URBANIZATION
BRAZIL
PERU
BOLIVIA
Converting rainforest to farmland can expose trees around the edges to dry conditions, making them more susceptible to wildfire
◼ Small- to medium-scale forest and shrubland converted for agriculture— then abandoned, allowing forest to regrow
PARAGUAY
CHILE
ARGENTINA
Forestry in the southeast involves managing forests —allowing logging and tree regrowth
URUGUAY
VENEZUELA
COMMODITY-DRIVEN
SHIFTING AGRICULTURE
COLOMBIA
FORESTRY
WILDFIRE
URBANIZATION
Converting rainforest to farmland can expose trees around the edges to dry conditions, making them more susceptible to wildfire
BRAZIL
PERU
BOLIVIA
PARAGUAY
CHILE
◼ Small- to medium-scale forest and shrubland converted for agriculture— then abandoned, allowing forest to regrow
ARGENTINA
Forestry in the southeast involves managing forests —allowing logging and tree regrowth
VENEZUELA
COMMODITY-DRIVEN
SHIFTING AGRICULTURE
COLOMBIA
FORESTRY
WILDFIRE
URBANIZATION
BRAZIL
PERU
BOLIVIA
PARAGUAY
CHILE
ARGENTINA
BRAZIL
URBANIZATION
WILDFIRE
FORESTRY
SHIFTING AGRICULTURE
COMMODITY-DRIVEN
Brazilian soy exports have increased more than fourfold since 2000—driven almost entirely by demand from China. Ongoing trade disputes with the U.S. have only increased demand in China: Soy shipments from Brazil increased 27% from 2017 to 2018, boosting domestic prices. Beef exports have surged as well. And as the African swine fever outbreak has decimated pork production in China, their demand for Brazilian beef is expected to increase.
Growing markets for Brazilian soy and beef meant producers needed more land. To meet demand, pastureland in central and southern parts of the country was replaced with soybeans, forcing ranchers to head north, clearing forests for cattle.
Soy
Meat
Metric tons:
8M
Metric tons:
6
CHINA
HK
4
OTHER
2
CHINA
OTHER
0
Soy
Beef
Metric tons:
Metric tons:
100M
8M
80
6
CHINA
HK
60
4
40
2
OTHER
CHINA
20
OTHER
0
0
2002
2018
2002
2018
Metric tons
Soy
80M
60
40
CHINA
20
0
OTHER
2002
2018
Metric tons
Meat
6M
HK
CHINA
4
2
OTHER
0
2002
2018
A decade ago, three of the largest meat-packing suppliers in Brazil—JBS, Marfrig and Minerva—signed an agreement with Greenpeace to no longer source from farmers involved in deforestation. But the environmental organization discontinued the program after a bribery scandal engulfed beef companies in Brazil in 2017. Large companies must deal with local suppliers, who then source from many small farmers—and short of tracking individual cattle, the chain is nearly impossible to verify.
The soybean industry has used satellite images to monitor deforestation and the conversion of forests into soy farms since 2006, when the country’s soy-processor group Abiove created a so-called “soy moratorium.” Cargill Inc., Bunge Ltd., Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and Louis Dreyfus Co. are among the companies that have committed to not purchasing soybeans from newly deforested land in the Amazon.
Still, since the start of the moratorium, soybean acreage in the Amazon is up more than fourfold, representing 13% of Brazil's total soybean area in the 2017-18 season—though only 1.4% of the plantings happened in newly deforested areas. That’s largely because the oilseed is mostly grown in areas that had already been cleared for pastures.
As international pressure over the Amazon fires has grown—with some countries considering bans on Brazilian exports—Bolsonaro acknowledged the increase in deforestation during a Aug. 22 live stream on social media, but said some countries are taking the moment “to undermine our agribusiness, our economy and repress Brazil to a subordinate position.”
“We have to respond to the world, show that we are responsible and say that the Amazon is ours.”