Brazil loses 33% of native vegetation: Amazon holds half of deforestation

Brasil de Fato

A new MapBiomas report, released on Wednesday (21), shows that Brazil has lost a third of its native vegetation since the Portuguese invasion in 1500. By 1985, when the dictatorship in Brazil officially ended, the loss of natural areas amounted to 20% of the national territory.

According to the study, in the last 39 years, this decrease expanded to another 13% of the territory, reaching 33% by 2023. Half of the total – around 55 million hectares – are in the Amazon. In addition to forest areas, the report analyzes water surfaces and natural areas not covered by vegetation, such as beaches and dunes. 

“This material is an abundant source of information for us to debate with society and to be able to plan Brazil’s territorial occupation for a sustainable future,” said MapBiomas researcher Eduardo Vélez, at a press conference.

In all, 29 classes or types of land use were mapped, including coral formations, which is a new feature in Collection 9 of the study. MapBiomas identified that 64.5% of the national territory is covered by native vegetation, and 32.5% is occupied by agriculture, the main deforestation activity in the country.

Alarming figures

The MapBiomas study describes the loss of vegetation in each of Brazil’s biomes. The biome that has lost the most native vegetation is the Amazon, which has seen a 14% reduction in the last 39 years, covering about 55 million hectares. “As a result, the Brazilian Amazon today has 81% [of its territory] covered by forests and native vegetation, which puts it very close to the percentage estimated by scientists for its tipping point (also known as point of no return), which is between 80% and 75% of native vegetation cover,” the report warns.

The Cerrado biome lost 38 million hectares of native vegetation during the analysed period, meaning 27% of its coverage. In Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, the sharpest reduction was in surface water, which fell from 21% in 1985 to 4% in 2023.

According to the report, of Brazil’s 27 federative units (26 states plus the Federal District), only Rio de Janeiro showed a small increase in native vegetation cover, from 30% to 32% of its territory. The other 26 units recorded a decrease, the most significant being in the states of Rondônia, which fell from 93% in 1985 to 59% native vegetation cover in 2023; followed by Maranhão, from 88% to 61%; Mato Grosso, from 87% to 60%, and Tocantins, from 85% to 61%.

Currently, according to MapBiomas, the states with the highest percentages of native vegetation are Amapá and Amazonas (both with 95%) and Roraima (93%). The states with the lowest proportion of native vegetation are Sergipe (20%); São Paulo (22%), and Alagoas (23%).

Environmental control

The MapBiomas report analyzes losses and gains in native vegetation cover since 2008, when the Amazon Fund was set up and decree 6.514 was issued, establishing fines for non-compliance with the environmental rules set out in the Forest Code. 

According to the study, 18% of the municipalities had stability between 2008 and 2023, meaning that their gains and losses of vegetation remained below 2%. In another 37%, there was a gain in native vegetation. The biome with the highest percentage of municipalities where the native vegetation area increased over the last 16 years was the Atlantic Forest, with 56%.

The states with the highest percentage of municipalities gaining native vegetation are Paraná (76%), Rio de Janeiro (76%) and São Paulo (72%). The states with the highest percentage of municipalities with vegetation loss are Rondônia (96%), Tocantins (96%) and Maranhão (93%).

Brazil has more than 60 million hectares of undesignated public forests. According to the study, they occupy 13% of the Legal Amazon and 92% of their area is covered by native vegetation.

“In the Legal Amazon, we have an area covered with forest larger than the state of Minas Gerais. These areas are more susceptible to deforestation than those under some kind of protection regime. It is important and urgent to give a destination to these areas and turn them into protected territories. Converting them to any anthropogenic use would further aggravate the current climate crisis,” explains Luís Oliveira, from MapBiomas’ Amazon team.  

“When a destination is given, you end the expectation of ownership of the area. This greatly reduces land grabbing. That’s why it’s fundamental to monitor the dynamics of these undesignated public forests and give them a destination,” adds Marcos Rosa, a researcher at MapBiomas.

According to the study, Indigenous Lands occupy 13% of the Brazilian territory, with 112 million hectares, and concentrate 19% of Brazil’s native vegetation. These are the areas with the highest level of preservation, having lost only 1% of their native vegetation in the last 39 years.

Corals

For the first time, MapBiomas carried out coral mapping, which identified 20,400 hectares of coral reefs off the east coast of Brazil. The study states that, due to the time it takes for these structures to form, there is no considerable variation in the area they occupy from 1985 to 2023. According to the mapping, 72% of coral reefs are in Marine Conservation Units, the largest of which is located in the Ponta da Baleia Conservation Unit, in Abrolhos, in southern Bahia, with over 6,000 hectares.

MapBiomas

The MapBiomas project brings together universities, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and tech companies in an initiative that seeks to monitor changes in land cover and land use in Brazil. All MapBiomas data, maps, methods and codes are available free of charge on the project’s website.

The official release of the MapBiomas Collection 9 of annual land cover and land use maps took place on Wednesday (21) in Brasilia, during the project’s Annual Seminar, attended by Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva.