Destruction of the Amazon slowed, somewhat, under Lula da Silva

Satellite pictures showed an 8.7% reduction in Amazonian deforestation in Brazil in 2025 compared to 2024, with a total of just over 3,800 square kilometres cut down or burned that year, Brazil's INPE or National Institute of Space Research revealed in January. There was a similar, nine per cent year-on-year drop in the destruction rate of the Cerrado, a grasslands region listed as a unique ecosystem, Mexico's La Jornada reported on 9 January, citing INPE. This was the first time deforestation dropped simultaneously in both environmental zones even if the area destroyed "remained twice the size of Sao Paulo," the paper observed. It attributed the decline clearly to policies of the administration led by the socialist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as rainforest destruction peaked at over 10,000 square kilometres in 2022, the last year of the presidency of the rightist Jair Bolsonaro. The Brazilian state most successful in this regard in 2025 was Pará in northern Brazil, which cut deforestation by 36%. The government wants to end Amazonian deforestation entirely by 2030. 

Colombian government says it curbed deforestation in 2025

Colombia's government claimed the rate of destruction of its Amazonian rainforest fell 25% in the first nine months of 2025 compared to that period in 2024. The state body monitoring deforestation, IDEAM, noted the removal of some 36,300 hectares (or 363 square kilometres) of forest canopy between January and the end of September, compared to 48,500 hectares the previous year, Bogotá's Radio Santa Fe reported on 31 December. Almost all deforestation in Colombia happens in the departments of Meta, Caquetá, Guaviare and Putumayo, and mainly caused by the expansion of farming, cattle farming or coca cultivation into the rainforest. The report attributed the partial success to a range of initiatives including reforestation programs and collaboration with local communities.

Destruction of the Amazon rainforest "relentless"

The Amazon rainforest was losing an area the size of six soccer pitches every minute, according to estimates by the World Wildlife Fund and the MapBiomas mapping project, mainly due to illegal felling and mining, and farming. Environmentalists believe the rainforest, spread across several countries, lost 88 million hectares (or 880,000 square kilometers) between 1985 and 2023, with consequences for the climate and especially rainfall far beyond the region, the website Infobae reported on 29 October. The destructive rate, it stated, citing data from the Global Forest Watch, had made Latin America the global leader in rainforest destruction.