Brazil’s Amazon rainforest recorded its lowest level of deforestation alerts since 2013, according to a report from Mongabay citing data released in August 2026 by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The latest decline in deforestation comes against the backdrop of four decades of forest loss and agricultural expansion that has reduced the Amazon’s remaining natural vegetation.

INPE’s DETER system, which gives environmental enforcement agencies almost real-time alerts of forest clearing, recorded 2,874 square kilometers of deforestation alerts between August 2025 and July 2026, 36 percent less than the previous 12 months. Brazil’s official annual deforestation estimate, calculated by the PRODES system, is due later in 2026.

Deforestation had increased to record highs during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency from 2019 to 2022, when environmental enforcement was weakened. It has declined since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the presidency in January 2023 and strengthened enforcement measures.

However, Lula’s efforts to reduce deforestation face political challenges. In August 2026, Brazil’s Supreme Court was set to hear cases over proposed legislation that would weaken environmental protections and indigenous land rights. Vetoes of such legislation by President Lula are being challenged. The disputed measures include a law that makes environmental licensing easier for major development projects and legislation that could restrict Indigenous land claims. The court also ruled on August 12 to uphold laws that could weaken the Amazon Soy Moratorium, an agreement that limits purchases of soy grown on recently deforested land. The ruling could weaken efforts to prevent further deforestation linked to soybean production.

The longer-term situation of the Amazon remains a concern. It lost 52.1 million hectares of natural area between 1985 and 2024, or 13 percent of the biome, according to an analysis published in 2025 by MapBiomas, a Brazilian land-use monitoring network. Three-fifths of the region’s agricultural land was created in the most recent 20 years of that period, the analysis found.

The loss of native vegetation has also made parts of the Amazon more vulnerable to extreme weather. Areas where native vegetation had been replaced by agriculture saw sharper rainfall declines during the 2023–24 El Niño (*) than forested areas, according to an August 2026 study.

Degradation from fires, logging and drought poses a separate threat. It affects roughly 40 percent of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years.

The latest DETER figures show that new clearing has slowed sharply, but the vegetation lost over the previous four decades has not been restored, and the risks posed by forest degradation and extreme weather remain.

*A climate pattern in which unusually warm Pacific Ocean surface temperatures affect weather around the world, often causing changes in rainfall and temperature.

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Amazon rainforest (Photo: Landscape Alliance / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])