Brazil\u2019s Atlantic forest, the country\u2019s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a new report shows.<\/p>\n
The forest is Brazil\u2019s most populous biome, and home to 80% of the population and major cities such as Rio de Janeiro<\/a> and S\u00e3o Paulo. In 2025 it recorded 8,658 hectares of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985.<\/p>\n Environmentalists have welcomed the results, which they say could even lead to \u201czero deforestation\u201d in the Atlantic forest within just a few years, but warned of potential risks that could reverse the downward trend of recent years.<\/p>\n One is the recent approval of the so-called \u201cdevastation bill\u201d<\/a> in Brazil\u2019s congress that drastically weakens environmental law.<\/p>\n The other is the prospect of a far-right government, opposed to environmental protection policies, returning to power in the October presidential election: Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro<\/a>, the senator and son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, is tied in the polls with the current president, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, who will seek re-election.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very worrying scenario,\u201d said Lu\u00eds Fernando Guedes Pinto, executive director of the NGO SOS Mata Atl\u00e2ntica<\/a>, who added that, with a victory for Bolsonaro, \u201cBrazil could lose the opportunity to be a global environmental leader\u201d.<\/p>\n During the elder Bolsonaro\u2019s 2019\u201323 administration, his policies led to a historic surge<\/a> in deforestation and a gold rush<\/a> into Indigenous lands. Many scientists, environmentalists and activists fear such rampant destruction could return if his son, who has vowed to follow his father\u2019s playbook, comes to power.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen the return of a policy to combat deforestation under the current government \u2026 [If Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro wins] there is a risk of returning to a path of rising deforestation across all biomes, because his political group \u2013 the same as his father\u2019s \u2013 is anti-science, denies climate science, and sees nature and forests as obstacles to development,\u201d said Pinto.<\/p>\n Two new sets of data were released on Thursday, both based on monitoring carried out in partnership between the NGO and other organisations.<\/p>\n One, conducted over four decades, showed<\/a> a 40% drop in deforestation from 2024 to 2025, falling from 14,366 to 8,658 hectares. Under Bolsonaro\u2019s presidency, it exceeded 20,000 hectares in each of his final two years in office.<\/p>\n The other dataset<\/a> showed a 28% decline, from 53,303 to 38,385 hectares. This monitoring has been conducted only since 2022, and last year\u2019s figure was the lowest.<\/p>\n The difference between the two monitoring systems, according to the NGO, stems from the satellites they use \u2013 the newer system is more precise, while the older one provides a longer historical record.<\/p>\n Despite the decline, \u201cdeforestation is still high\u201d in the biome, said Pinto, adding that \u201cin the Atlantic forest, every fragment lost makes a huge difference\u201d.<\/p>\n The biome is the country\u2019s third largest, behind the Amazon and the Cerrado savanna, but is by far the most urbanised and degraded. The Atlantic forest now has only 24% of its original forest cover, while the Amazon retains about 80% and the Cerrado around 50%.<\/p>\n Even so, if the downward trend of recent years continues \u2013 which the NGO attributes to a combination of public pressure, civil society mobilisation, environmental policies and enforcement actions \u2013 Pinto believes the biome could reach \u201czero deforestation\u201d within the next three years.<\/p>\n Standing in the way, however, is the new law, considered the greatest setback to Brazil\u2019s environmental legislation since licensing first became a legal requirement in the 1980s.<\/p>\n Lula vetoed<\/a> parts of it, but his vetoes were overturned<\/a> by the largely conservative congress at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n The new law removes the requirement for prior approval from the federal environmental agency for states to authorise deforestation, leaving the decision entirely to local authorities, and its constitutionality is being challenged in the supreme court.<\/p>\n Malu Ribeiro, director of public policy at SOS Mata Atl\u00e2ntica, said the law is a \u201cdistortion\u201d that puts Brazil at odds with the Paris agreement and could exacerbate climate disasters. \u201cWeakening protection instruments now risks everything we have spent years building,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazil\u2019s Atlantic forest, the country\u2019s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-441216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}