While deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen sharply over the past decade, a larger share of forest loss is now being driven by smallholders who are more difficult to control, posing new challenges for the Brazilian government.

Environmentalists have called Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s commitments on reducing deforestation and supporting renewable energy ‘weak’ and representing little more than maintaining the status quo. Greenpeace Brazil say the target of restoring 12 million hectares of forest represents only half of the reforestation requirements under Brazil’s Forest Code and are just another commitment to comply with existing laws, not a bold new initiative.
Brazil has, however, worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than any large country over the past decade, with emissions from all sectors having fallen by around 40% since 2005, with an 85% cut in carbon dioxide from deforestation.

Satellite data analysis suggests deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon may have reached a 7-year high. Imazon, a Belém-based non-profit, released data showing deforestation in the region pacing ahead of the previous year’s level for 13 months consecutively. The 12-month moving average of short-term deforestation alert data has reached levels that have not been seen since 2008. This hasn’t yet been confirmed by the Brazilian government who now report statistics quarterly for its deforestation system, but recent figures released by INPE mirror this data.

Imazon’s newest study shows that, between August 2012 and July 2014, 90% deforestation in Brazilian Amazon happened in protected areas, while 10% occurred outside protected areas. During the two years’ period, forest loss was heavily concentrated in areas where infrastructure was expanding and management plans and funding were lacking. The study also recommends possible measures to against the deforestation, including law enforcement, eviction of non-traditional settlers from illegally occupied forests, and state resettlement schemes, etc.

Archer Daniels Midland, the third largest global supplier of agricultural commodities and one of the world’s leading soy traders, is launching their Responsible Soy Standard. Under this new programme, yearly assessments will be conducted by expert third parties to determine if growers are complying with a number of environmental, legal, social and agronomic standards.
Despite soy production acting as a leading driver of deforestation across South America, palm oil has remained the priority commodity for companies in the fight against deforestation. While 117 private companies have pledged to reduce the impact of their involvement with palm oil, only 27 have done the same with soy. It is hoped that ADM’s commitment could lead to other organisations following their lead and expanding their commitments to deforestation across commodities.
Experts have warned, however, that although commitments like these have led to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, the problem is simply being moved elsewhere. Much of the conversion of natural ecosystems for soy cultivation now occurs in other areas including Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay.

Researchers have said that deforestation of the Amazon in March has almost tripled compared to March 2014. Imazon, a Brazilian non-profit research institution, say that 22 square miles of forest have been removed across the Amazon region in March, compared to 7.7 square miles in March 2014. Three quarters of the cleared forest was focused in Mato Grosso, where part of the Pantanal wetlands are found. These figures by Imazon differ to those of the Brazilian government who suggested that deforestation had actually fallen by 18% across the nine states forming the Amazon basin.

A report from Prince Charles' International Sustainability Unit has found that we are still some way from realising the full potential of tropical forests in stabilising global climate, agricultural yields, ecosystem services and local livelihoods. The report, Tropical Forests: A Review, argues that forests have such incredible potential because of their dual role as carbon sinks. Less deforestation means less carbon is released and as the forest continues to grow, more carbon is locked in to the biomass. The report also highlights the importance of tropical forests to regional and global rainfall cycles. This is particularly relevant for Brazil where a severe drought has impacted cities and major agricultural areas. Modelling has shown that deforestation in the Amazon and Congo Basin could affect rainfall patterns across Europe and North America. The report urges forests be prioritised as a significant solution as we approach binding international agreements on climate change.

New research has shown that Brazil and Indonesia paid over $40bn in subsidies to industries that drive rainforest destruction between 2009 and 2012 - compared to $346m in conservation aid they received to protect forests. The report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) encouraged a ‘radical rethink’ of how subsidies for commodities are assigned. ODI identify part of the problem in a lack of coordination between environment ministries and other government departments seeking to protect commodity exports and reduce rural poverty. The ODI have called for subsidy reform allowing a model of forest finance to protect forests and their surrounding rural communities.

While estimates from various UN bodies claim “decreasing deforestation rates and increased afforestation” over recent years, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters indicates a 62% acceleration in net deforestation in the humid tropics from the 1990s to the 2000s. The new study used satellite images to examine the tropical forests of 34 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand, that collectively house 80 percent of the world’s tropical forest area. Brazil “dominated” tropical forest losses, according to the study, showing a 33 percent acceleration in the amount of forest that was lost over the time period. According to the researchers the difference is because the UN mostly uses country based self-reporting rather than analysis of satellite data. The drought currently hitting Brazil has in part been blamed on deforestation.

A study published in the journal Science, led by Holly Gibbs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that the moratorium on forest conversion established by Brazilian soy giants in 2006 dramatically reduce deforestation for soy expansion in the Amazon, and have been more effective in cutting forest destruction than the government's land use policy in the region. The study is based on spatial analysis across thousands of farm in the Brazilian Amazon and cerrado, a woody grassland, and researchers compared forest loss before and after the moratorium was established.

1. Zero deforestation commitments. 2015 may be the year that many of the zero deforestation commitments are actually implemented.
2. Joko Widodo’s forest commitments. As Indonesia’s new president takes on the challenge of reforming the forestry sector, look out for greater scrutiny of concession licensees, as well as a crack-down on forestry-related corruption.
3. The Brazilian Amazon. There are concerns that Brazil’s current downward deforestation trajectory may not last.
4. Will Paris product a binding climate framework? Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is expected to have a central role in the climate talks in Paris at the end of the year.
5. Where are the new deforestation hotspots? Data from the WRI suggests that deforestation may be rising in several countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Ecuador and Ghana amongst others. 2015 will also uncover new studies and tools that will help better quantify change in forest cover.
6. Falling commodity prices. Lower prices reduce the profitability of converting rainforests for palm oil plantations. On the other hand, companies may be less likely to adopt environmental measures if they have less cash on hand.
7. Myanmar. As Myanmar opens up further to foreign investors, concerns about the fate of the country’s forests will rise.
8. Dams in the Amazon. Indigenous groups and environmentalists are ready to fight against Brazil’s hydro projects in the Tapajos basin.
9. RSPO and zero deforestation. If the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) does move towards zero deforestation it has a critical tool in place to do so: last year members were required to submit the GPS coordinates of their concessions.
10. Jurisdictional initiatives. Sub-national efforts to develop forest-friendly policies and initiatives will move forward in 2015.

• 2014 was the ‘year of the zero deforestation commitment’, particularly in the palm oil sector but also for agribusinesses like Cargill.
• Plantation forestry, in all of its various forms, is still seen as one of the biggest drivers of deforestation.
• APP continues to see praise for their work implementing the Forest Conservation Policy.
• APRIL continues to be criticised for their weak policy and poor performance.
• Global Forest Watch was lauded as a significant leap forward for open source forest monitoring.
• Drones made their first foray into forest conservation and are being used by Cargill, and imminently by Brazilian forest agencies, for monitoring and enforcement.
• The mood in Indonesia is quietly optimistic, with a new government in place departments have merged (Ministry of Forestry and Ministry of Environment merging), and there was a widespread crackdown on corruption.
• NGOs have turned their attention to a new aspect of the pulp and paper sector: dissolving pulp, which is used in a diverse range of products including clothing and toiletries.

The Brazilian government has said forest clearance in the Amazon has decreased by 18% over the past year to July 2014, but environmental NGOs disagree saying their data shows increased rates of forest loss. Brazil’s environment minister, Izabella Teixeira, said approximately 4800km2 was lost between August 2013 and July 2014. This was down from 5900km2 during the same period a year earlier. But WWF and Imazon disagree and say that alternative satellite monitoring systems, different to those used by the government, show a staggering increase in forest loss of over 460%. Ms Teixeira maintained that the official government estimate was the most accurate: “Anything else is speculation. We have been working hard to end deforestation.”

Large scale landowners are estimated to be responsible for around half of deforestation in the Amazon, compared to 12 per cent by smallholders, but a report from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has found that since 2005, the contribution to annual deforestation by the largest landowners has fallen by 63 per cent, while that of smallholders has increased by 69 per cent. In 2013, overall deforestation increased by 28 per cent compared with the previous year. One of the authors said that part of the reason for the rise was that many conservation areas had been scaled down or had their protection status changed, and flagship public-private initiatives, such as a moratorium on trading soya beans from newly deforested areas in the Amazon, were about to end. Furthermore, a boom in infrastructure projects in the Amazon since 2009, including the building of new roads and dams, may also be contributing to Brazil’s rising deforestation rates. The report recommended schemes that would provide credit to Brazil’s 6 million small landowners living in rural areas in the Amazon and promote more efficient farming techniques among small farmers and large landowners.

Campaigning organisation Greenpeace has spent two months placing GPS trackers on illegal loggers in the Amazon using GPS tracking technology and satellite surveillance. The operation was designed to uncover the activities and movements of illegal loggers near Santarém, the centre of the logging industry in the Amazon. The investigation found that the timber is transported by trucks on highways at night to evade the police and that fake documentation is used to launder the timber.

A new report by Forest Trends, a US based NGO, found out that around five football fields of tropical forest have been illegally cleared every minute between 2000 and 2012, which losses have been driven by consumer demand for beef, leather and timber in Europe and US. The values of this trade in commodities including timber, leather, beef, soy and palm oil, accounting for $61bn a year. The majority of the illegal deforestation for commercial agriculture has been in Brazil and Indonesia. The local governments are lack of capacity to enforce laws to against illegal logging. Report found that licences and permits to cut the trees are often acquired through corruption. Authors believe that consumer countries in EU could have done more to tackle the problem. Strong regulations rather than voluntary actions is the better solution. The biggest concern for campaigners now is the spread of illegal deforestation to new countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The founder of the independent news site dedicated to rainforests points to a slowing deforestation rate in Brazil, new initiatives extending our capacity to monitor forests and zero deforestation commitments from the private sector as reasons for optimism. He thinks that most consumers aren’t aware of the issues to the extent it affects their purchasing decisions, except in particularly egregious cases. And he says that NGO campaigns targeted at brands are effective in that these brands are more likely to change their policies quickly than governments and consequently the brands will push governments to reward their commitments by forcing the laggards to catch up.

According to a recently published report in the Nature Climate Change magazine, Indonesia’s deforestation rate doubled that of Brazil in 2012, and since the Millennium it has lost forested land equivalent to one-third the size of mainland Spain. The report found that the 2011 moratorium on deforestation from intact forests actually led to vast quantities of deforestation in unprotected forests. The report has received the support of the new Indonesia President, Joko Widodo.

A new study, which claims to be the most comprehensive yet, suggests that nearly twice as much primary forest is being cut down in Indonesia as in Brazil, the historical global leader, despite Brazil’s forest area being roughly four times the size of Indonesia’s. According to the government's former head of forestry data gathering nearly 1m extra hectares of primary forest may have been felled in the last 12 years than was recorded officially.

A recently published paper in the journal Science assesses how Brazil managed to reduce its deforestation rates by 70% over the course of a decade and points to a three-stage process in which bans, better governance in frontier areas and consumer pressure on companies worked, if fitfully and only after several false starts. While the Brazilian Forest Code from the mid-1990s mandated that 80% of farm land had to be set aside as a forest reserve, deforestation rates reached their highest as the code was not enforced. However, from 2005 Brazil’s President Lula da Silva made halting deforestation a priority which led to better cooperation between enforcement agencies and public prosecutors. At the same time, improvements in the efficiency of cattle breeding, a fall in export earnings from soybeans and an NGO campaign to boycott Brazilian soybeans caused deforestation to plummet. Then in 2009, once soybean expansion resumed, the government focused its efforts on the counties with the worst deforestation rates and banned them from getting cheap credit until the rates fell. Other reinforcing factors included a proper land registry, a cattle boycott, an amnesty for illegal clearances before 2008 and money from a special $1 billion Amazon Fund financed by foreign aid.