Saving the Brazilian Amazon: Understanding the Deforestation Slowdown and its Implications for Current Forest Policy

Abstract

Deforestation is a critical threat to biodiversity and to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Deforestation contributes upwards of 15% of annual GHG emissions, and is concentrated in a few countries. Brazil is one, as it has the world’s largest extent of tropical forests and until recently had the world’s highest rate of forest loss. In 2005, Brazil’s annual deforestation rate declined rapidly, and by 2009, it had declined from a peak rate of 27,772 km2 in 2004 to approximately 7,500 km2. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, non-policy factors played a crucial role in Brazil’s deforestation slowdown in 2005, easing pressure on forests and smoothing policy implementation for Brazil’s 2006 forest conservation agenda. Agricultural factors, including transportation infrastructure and access to credit, were driving forces of deforestation from 1995 to 2004, and this research finds that those factors continue to play a role, to an extent that has magnified policy effects from Brazil’s new forest laws and from the 2006 Soy Moratorium. Agricultural indicators for soy and cattle contracted from 2005 to 2007. This contraction can help explain the slight deforestation decrease from 2004 to 2005, and suggests that economic factors are likely to have enhanced the impact of forest policies that Brazil implemented in 2006. Since 2005, small-scale and secondary deforestation has been concentrated in Mato Grosso and Pará, the two states responsible for the largest share of historical deforestation and agricultural output in the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA). This is likely due to pervasive efforts to exploit shortcomings in Brazil’s monitoring system and evade detection. As a result, the BLA has become more susceptible to fire-driven deforestation. Deforestation declined at a slower pace, and likely leveled off at 10,000 square kilometers (km2) in 2009, instead of continuing to decrease. This research also examines and rejects the possibility that the new policies shifted deforestation to forests outside the BLA. Instead of finding evidence of leakages from the BLA to other Brazilian forest biomes, there are similar patterns of land usage and deforestation in the Cerrado and neighboring South American countries that continue to drive deforestation.