Fires are raging at a record rate in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, and scientists warn that it could strike a devastating blow to the fight against climate change. According to INPE, more than 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being destroyed every minute of every day and the fires are burning at the highest rate. Environmental activists and organisations accuse Brazil's president -Jair Bolsonaro of relaxing environmental controls in the country and encouraging deforestation.

Hivos and Greenpeace Netherlands, together with indigenous groups from the Amazon rainforest, are launching a new campaign against deforestation called ‘All eyes on the Amazon’. Studies show that indigenous communities living in rainforests are crucial to the sustainable protection of these areas. This programme will aim to give indigenous communities the tools, knowledge and contacts to combat deforestation. It will also use satellite technology and drone photography to give indigenous groups evidence of the deforestation that is occurring.

The Brazilian government has revised upward its estimate for the extent of Amazon rainforest destroyed last year. Figures released last week by Brazil’s National Space Research Agency (INPE) put Amazon deforestation at 6,207 square kilometres for the year ended July 31, 2015. That represents an increase of 6.5 percent relative to the estimate of 5,831 square kilometres published last December.

A recent analysis by Monitoring the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) finds that deforestation is pressing further into a protected area in central Peru. Located in central Peru's Amazon rainforest, El Sira is home to several indigenous groups, as well as endangered species found nowhere else and surrounded by deforestation for cropland, cattle pasture, and gold mining. According to the analysis, these activities have invaded the northern portion of El Sira reserve, with 1,600 hectares of forest cleared since 2013.

Greenpeace have released a publication outlining the economic exploitation issues of the Amazon rainforest and is demanding that the Brazilian government cancel hydropower projects such as the São Luiz do Tapajós (SLT) dam. This dam alone is expected to cause 2,200km2 of deforestation and to drown 400km2 of rainforest. Previous projects have led to huge habitats being wiped out causing significant impacts on the populations of fish, aquatic reptiles and the life cycles of local mammals.

Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) discovered a sharp deforestation increase in the lower Las Piedras River area, which is in the far west Amazon rainforest of the Madre de Dios region of Southern Peru. This area is considered as an incredibly biodiverse area. The headwater of Las Piedras River is protected, however, the lower remains under threat largely due to the controversial Trans-Amazon highway, which brought loggers, hunters, gold miners, and settlers.

The Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) published a report showing the deforestation between 2010 and 2013 declined sharply across the Amazon basin. This is the first time the change in primary forest in the Amazon outside of Brazil is documented. Unlike Brazil, which owns advanced monitoring system, forest data from non-Brazilian countries are much less reported before. The report also includes a detailed deforestation map.

Google has flown one of its Street View cameras down a zip wire for the first time. It set up a wire in the Amazon rainforest to capture new 360-degree images of the trees from root to tip. The new images have been released on Google Maps and the hope is that “environmentalists will use it as a tool to go and see what's there." The images have also captured lots of previously unrecorded wildlife.

Brazil’s Environmental Minister Izabella Teixeira has said that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has increased by 28 per cent in the past year.
Provisional statistics suggest that the increase has seen 5,843 sq km of rainforest suffer from deforestation between August 2012 and July 2013, compared to 4,571 sq km in the previous 12 months. Although the statistics are still significantly below those of 2004, the Brazilian Government is still concerned that the rate of deforestation is now on the rise. Many environmentalists blame the upwards trend on a forest protection law reform in 2012, which reduced the protected areas in farms and declared an amnesty for all areas destroyed before 2008.

A remote sensing company has signed a deal with the Brazilian space agency to deliver near real-time satellite imagery to monitor forest clearing in the Amazon rainforest and target illegal logging as it happens. Illegal loggers have grown smart to the current monitoring system by clearing smaller areas to evade detection but the new system will provide a much higher level of granularity in its imaging. Such technology is seen as important in the development of an effective REDD+ programme.