Brazil cleared 3,335 square kilometres of Amazon forest from August 2025 to July 2026, down 41.8% from the previous cycle's 5,731 square kilometres.
Cerrado clearing reached 5,516.69 square kilometres from July 2025 to July 2026, down 23.8% from 7,235.27 square kilometres a year earlier.
The government says deforestation has fallen 71% since 2023, after Lula revived the PPCDAm plan when he took office in January 2023.
Lula faces Flavio Bolsonaro in the 25 October runoff, after a first round in which Bolsonaro won 47% to Lula's 45%.
Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) published its annual satellite count on Friday, 16 October 2026. Between August 2025 and July 2026, 3,335 square kilometres of Amazon forest were cleared, the lowest figure since records began in 1988. The fall is 41.8% against the previous cycle, which recorded 5,731 square kilometres. The numbers come from Prodes, the satellite monitoring project Inpe runs to calculate Brazil's official deforestation rates, and were presented at an event in the Palácio do Planalto in Brasília.
Data from the article text
The Cerrado savanna showed a similar pattern. Clearing there totalled 5,516.69 square kilometres from July 2025 to July 2026, down 23.8% from 7,235.27 square kilometres in the year before. It is the lowest figure in a series that starts in 2001.
Data from the article text
The government says deforestation has fallen 71% since 2023. Lula took office in January 2023 for a third, non-consecutive term and revived the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon, known as PPCDAm. That plan was launched in 2004 and shelved under Jair Bolsonaro. Its measures include restoring sanctions for illegal clearing detected by satellites, a tool that had been halted under Bolsonaro. The government also proposed barring properties with illegal deforestation from bank loans, and it directed more funding to priority Amazon municipalities that reduced forest loss. Marina Silva, who led the environment ministry until she resigned in April to run for Congress, helped carry the plan out, and her former deputy Joao Paulo Capobianco is now the minister.
During Bolsonaro's presidency from 2019 to 2022, deforestation rose by about 60%, with more than 45,000 square kilometres cleared, according to official data. Clearing reached a peak of 12,500 square kilometres in 2022.
Capobianco described the drop in a press conference in Brasília in strikingly positive terms, calling it almost unbelievable. Lula wrote on X after the release that his goal is zero illegal deforestation by 2030. Marcio Astrini, executive director of the Climate Observatory, a network of Brazilian environmental groups, argued that the results show environmental protection and economic growth can advance together.
“The formula is always the same, and it works.”
Astrini added that the latest rates suggest the 2030 target is reachable without harming the economy. Fires, drought and climate change remain threats to the forest, according to the reporting.
Lula is seeking a fourth term, and the decisive round is a runoff on 25 October against Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro. In the first round, Bolsonaro won 47% of the vote to Lula's 45%. In the final polls before that vote, Lula had narrowly led, and a close runoff is expected. Bloomberg framed highway construction through the Amazon rainforest as a point where the tensions of the presidential race are most visible.
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Brazil's satellite data show 3,335 square kilometres of Amazon forest cleared between August 2025 and July 2026, down 41.8% on the previous cycle. Lula welcomed the figures ahead of a close runoff on 25 October.
AI text based on reports by ANSA.it, newsORF.at, Deutsche Welle and other publishers. Published .