Huge forest losses in the Amazon: What does this mean for our climate?

Huge forest losses in the Amazon: What does this mean for our climate?

In the Brazilian Amazon, the situation in the rainforests has worsened dramatically: since 1985, around 52 million hectares of nature have been lost there, an area larger than the whole of Spain. Overall, the loss in Brazil since records began is a worrying 111.7 million hectares, which is more than three times the area of ​​Germany. These alarming figures come from the initiative MapBiomas, which analyzes satellite images and which consists of universities, NGOs and technology companies.

In almost five centuries up to 1985, 60 percent of today's land in Brazil had already been converted to agriculture, mining and cities. But shockingly, most of this transformation, 40 percent, occurred in just four decades between 1985 and 2024. The years between 1995 and 2004 in particular saw the most severe deforestation. The last decade has been marked by accelerated deforestation due to climate impacts, soil degradation and continued expansion of agricultural land.

Climate impacts and forest fires

The consequences of this deforestation are dramatic: the proportion of natural areas in Brazil has fallen from 80 percent in 1985 to just 65 percent in 2024. The largest wetland on earth, the Pantanal, has imprinted its flood cycles, with 2024 considered the driest year in the last 40 years. In 2024, the water surface in the Pantanal was a whopping 73 percent below the average for the years up to 2024, which resulted in devastating forest fires. In the Cerrado, Brazil's wet savannas in the southeast, about 40 million hectares of natural vegetation have been cut down over the past four decades - a decline of 28 percent.

Amid these worrying developments, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged “zero deforestation” for Brazil by 2030. This announcement is expected at the upcoming COP30 global climate conference in November in Belém in the Amazon region, where issues such as climate protection and deforestation are on the agenda. Despite these promises, pressure on resource use in the Amazon remains high.

Global efforts to save forests

The issue of deforestation is not just a Brazilian concern, but a global one. At the UN climate conference COP26 in Glasgow, over 100 countries committed to stopping the destruction of forests and other landscapes by the end of 2030. Signatories include prominent nations such as Brazil and Russia. Yet that deadline is being criticized by climate activists as too late, while British leaders emphasize the importance of forests in limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The declaration to combat deforestation is supported by a financial package worth over $20 billion. This agreement covers countries worldwide that are home to more than 85 percent of the global forests, which includes the Amazon rainforest. Despite these international framework conditions, it is clear that deforestation, particularly in the Amazon, continues to progress unstoppably. The next few years are crucial to actually make a difference.