The Amazon has delivered its best number in nearly four decades, at the most political moment possible. Brazil's space research agency Inpe said 3,335 square kilometres of Amazon forest were cleared in the 12 months to July 2026, a fall of 41.8 per cent from the previous year and the lowest total since record-keeping began in 1988, AFP reported.
The previous record low was 4,571 square kilometres in 2011-12. Since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office in 2023, deforestation has fallen by 71.2 per cent, according to the Prodes satellite programme. Deforestation in the neighbouring Cerrado savanna also fell, by 23.8 per cent to 5,516 square kilometres, its lowest since 2001.
'It's an absolutely stratospheric drop — it's like a dream,' Environment Minister Joao Paulo Capobianco told a news conference in Brasilia. Lula posted on X: 'Our goal is to achieve zero illegal deforestation by 2030,' the pledge he made on taking office after the Bolsonaro years, when annual losses ran nearly 60 per cent higher than the preceding four years and protection budgets were cut.
The timing matters: Lula faces Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, in a presidential run-off on October 25, with polls showing a neck-and-neck race. Flavio Bolsonaro has pledged to fight organised crime in the Amazon and to end illegal deforestation by 2029, while praising his father's opposition to what he calls a 'radical environmental agenda.'
Scientists note the milestone is about clear-cutting, not fire or degradation: about 15 per cent of the biome has been lost in total, and researchers warn that at 20 to 25 per cent loss the Amazon's rainfall system could fail.
