{"id":5579,"date":"2019-10-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-prod.greenpeace.org\/usa\/brazil-and-the-amazon-forest\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T10:31:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T10:31:29","slug":"brazil-and-the-amazon-forest","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/forests\/brazil-and-the-amazon-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil and the Amazon Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Brazil and the Amazon forest<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest intact forest. It is home to more than 24 million people in Brazil alone, including hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples belonging to 180 different groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Protect rainforests<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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There\u2019s a reason the Amazon was the place that inspired scientists to coin the term \u201cbiodiversity.\u201d The region is home to 10 percent of all plant and animal species known on Earth. There are approximately 40,000 species of plants and more than 400 mammals, with almost 1,300 different varieties of birds and an insect population in the millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to its unparalleled diversity of life, the Amazon plays an essential role in helping to control the planet\u2019s climate. The Amazon Basin stores approximately 100 billion metric tons of carbon \u2014 that\u2019s more than ten times the annual global emissions from fossil fuels.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it covers 2.6 million square miles across nine countries \u2014 Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana \u2014 about 60 percent of the Amazon Basin is in Brazil, where Greenpeace has focused its efforts.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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In the last 40 years, the Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 18 percent of its rainforest \u2014 an area about the size of California \u2014 to illegal logging<\/a>, soy agriculture, and cattle ranching. Despite the creation of protected areas in recent decades, most of the remaining forest is under threat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the world, people like you have stepped up to demand policy reform, additional protected areas, and commitments from corporations that have slowed the rate of deforestation. Still, forest areas the size of entire cities are burned in the Brazilian Amazon every year to make way for cattle ranching and soy plantations. This has resulted in record-breaking level fires that are catastrophic for the climate and for Indigenous Peoples\u2019 that rely on these forests.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

An international campaign<\/h2>\n\n

Together with Greenpeace\u2019s office in Brazil, the work in the Amazon investigates the on-the-ground impact global supply chains have in this regions to highlight the threats and pressure governments to do more. The work in the Amazon has included the award-winning Amazon Soy Moratorium<\/a>, groundbreaking research on the International Market\u2019s role in cattle-driven deforestation in the Amazon, and in defending critical forest areas from problematic infrastructure expansion.<\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace International\u2019s Amazon campaign includes adjacent biomes; the Cerrado Savanna Grasslands in Brazil, the Gran Chaco forests in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. While lesser-known internationally, these forests are critical in the fight against climate change<\/a> and are under serious threat from the same drivers that impact the Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Learn more about…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Indonesian forests and palm oil<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Canadian Boreal forests<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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