🌳 Deforestation drops Brazil-wide

For first time on record, deforestation declines all across Brazil

For the first time since at least 2019, and likely for many years before that, deforestation fell or remained stable in all Brazilian biomes in 2024. The figures come from satellite monitoring platform MapBiomas, which released its Annual Deforestation Report (RAD) earlier today.

In total, the number of deforestation alerts in Brazil dropped by almost 27% between 2023 and 2024, while the actual area of forest loss fell by more than 32%. In the Amazon, the drop reached 16.8% — building on the impressive 63.6% decrease recorded in 2023.

Not to be confused with the official Prodes annual deforestation figures (to be released in November, ahead of COP30), the MapBiomas analysis consists of the validation and refining of deforestation alerts, using high-quality satellite imagery.

MapBiomas collates deforestation alerts from almost a dozen different sources and analyzes each one using before-and-after satellite pictures. Land use changes are then crossed with public data and logged on the platform.

It is important to point out that the MapBiomas system does not draw any distinction between legal and illegal deforestation, making it a useful companion to official figures.

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