Brazil: Environmental Challenges

Brazil holds the largest share of the Amazon rainforest, the most biodiverse region on Earth, and the forest's condition has long shaped the country's environmental profile. Large-scale clearing began in the 1960s in Mato Grosso and southern Pará and spread into Rondônia and Acre, where nearly two-fifths of the state had been deforested by the late 1980s. Satellite monitoring later showed deforestation peaking around 2004, declining through the early 2010s, and trending upward again through 2020. Researchers estimate that roughly 19 percent of the original Amazon forest has been lost, with some scientists warning that losses nearing 40 percent could trigger irreversible degradation.

Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions reflect this land-use pattern. The Brazilian Climate Observatory attributed 44 percent of the country's 2019 emissions to deforestation, versus 28 percent from agriculture and 19 percent from energy production. By 2023, national emissions reached an estimated 2.38 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, more than 4 percent of the global total. Brazil's first national climate change assessment projected that continued warming could cut Amazon rainfall by up to 45 percent and raise regional temperatures by as much as 6 degrees Celsius by century's end, with risks to hydropower output and coastal areas such as São Paulo, where sea levels rose about 30 centimeters over the twentieth century.

Policy toward the forest has shifted across administrations. During the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, from 2019 to 2022, international criticism grew over the government's handling of major Amazon wildfires and a slowdown in environmental enforcement even as emissions rose. The administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which followed, prioritized forest protection and revived the Amazon Fund, a multinational conservation financing mechanism. In 2024, Brazil submitted a revised national climate pledge targeting a 59 to 67 percent emissions cut from 2005 levels by 2035, alongside a broader commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.