At just over 519 million hectares, Brazil has the largest
remaining area of tropical forest in the world. The Brazilian
Amazon covers an area of 41o million hectares, accounting for
48% of the country’s total area. Although Brazil has several
other large forest biomes including the Atlantic Forest, the
“Cerrado” (savannah), the “Caatinga” (common vegetation in arid
zones), the Brazilian Amazon is often used as a proxy for
Brazil’s tropical forests. The rate of deforestation in the
Brazilian Amazon is among the highest globally. In recent years,
however, its deforestation rates have dropped from around 1.9
million hectares per year in 2005 (equivalent to 0.46% per year)
to 0.6 million hectares per year in 2010 (~0.15% per year). In
2008, at the fourteenth Conference of the...