The Amazon Proves That Governance Matters More Than Markets in Forest Preservation

Detected deforestation fell to 1,325 km² between August 2025 and January 2026, representing a 35% decrease compared to a year earlier. This exceptional decline in the Brazilian Amazon marks the lowest level for this period since 2014. For the first time in decades, a state has empirically proven that reinvigorated public governance can reverse a deforestation trajectory that many considered irreversible.

This spectacular demonstration reveals a major tension: forest degradation from fires increased by 44% in 2024 compared to 2023, showing that official success masks concerning blind spots.

The Essentials

Official deforestation fell to 5,796 km² in 2025, the lowest level in 11 years
IBAMA increased violation notices by 81% under Lula after rebuilding state capacity
Forest degradation paradoxically on the rise: 2.5 million hectares degraded, +44% in one year
Burned areas down 45% thanks to anti-fire policies

When Governance Supersedes Market Logic

Upon his inauguration in January 2023, Lula immediately restored the Permanent Interministerial Commission for Deforestation Prevention and Control, relaunched the Amazon Action Plan in its fifth phase, and restored operational force to IBAMA and ICMBio. This institutional reactivation contrasts sharply with the market-driven approach that dominated international environmental policies.

In three years, IBAMA increased violation notices related to forest cover by a factor of 1.8, fines by 63%, and embargoes by 51% compared to the Bolsonaro years. These figures demonstrate that a determined administration can do more than market mechanisms to protect forests.

The contrast is striking: under Bolsonaro, deforestation had increased by over 50%, environmental agencies had been systematically defunded, and no indigenous territory had been ratified. In three years, cumulative reduction has reached 50% compared to the 2022 peak, preventing emissions of 733.9 million tons of CO₂, equivalent to the combined annual emissions of Spain and France.

The Cerrado Reveals Policy Coherence

Deforestation in the Cerrado, a savanna ecosystem neighboring the Amazon, also fell by 11.5% to 7,235 km², its lowest level in five years. This simultaneity proves that the improvement does not result from conjunctural economic or climatic factors, but from coherent policy.

The launch of the Action Plan for Deforestation and Fire Prevention and Control in the Cerrado and the relaunching of the PPCDAM, which had remained dormant between 2018 and 2022, contributed decisively to this decline.

Unlike the Amazon, which benefits from strengthened legal protection, the Cerrado has fewer legal protections and less international scrutiny. When enforcement tightened in certain parts of the Amazon, agribusiness shifted toward the Cerrado, where governance is much weaker.

The simultaneous reduction in both biomes demonstrates that coordinated public action surpasses market adjustments, following a similar logic to how Europe is transforming ecological restoration into territorial engineering.

Fires Reveal the Limits of Official Success

Burned areas detected by INPE’s DETER system fell by 45%, dropping from 39,310 km² over the 12 months through September 2024 to 21,543 km² for the same period ending in September 2025. Yet this improvement masks a concerning phenomenon.

In August 2024, Rodrigo Agostinho, IBAMA’s director, stated that fire was being used as a new deforestation tool, replacing traditional chainsaws and tractors. “Deforestation is expensive. Fire is much cheaper. You just need to buy gasoline and spread it.” Beyond its low cost, fire is harder to detect through the satellite imagery used by environmental agents.

João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of the Environment Ministry, revealed that in June 2025, more than half (51%) of recently detected deforestation was recorded in forest areas that had recently burned. This proportion jumped from an average of 6.6% between 2016 and 2022 to 21% in May 2024.

Growing Climate Vulnerability

The exceptional drought of 2024, record heat, and the expansion of roads and forestry operations left vast forest areas dry and flammable, causing 2.78 million hectares of primary forest loss, approximately 60% of which from fire.

This fragility reveals a paradox: according to an INPE source, the Amazon was highly resilient because it had abundant moisture. But in recent years, with severe droughts and climate change, fire penetrates the forest. The same area, if struck by three successive fires for example, can lose more than 70% of its vegetation cover.

Strengthened governance under Lula effectively combats direct deforestation but encounters the physical limits of an ecosystem weakened by climate change. Technical solutions reach their limits when confronted with the magnitude of climate disruptions, following a similar logic to China’s anti-desertification initiatives in Africa.

Infrastructure Against Environment: Persistent Contradictions

The controversial BR-319 highway, connecting Manaus and Porto Velho, gained significant momentum in 2025, driven by the new labor reform that could accelerate “strategic” projects. President Lula has personally cemented his support for repaving this road, which crosses one of the Amazon’s most preserved regions.

On November 27, less than a week after COP30 ended, a powerful political bloc in Brazil’s National Congress, representing agribusiness and development interests, weakened protections for rivers, forests, and indigenous communities in the Amazon. Under this law, deforested or cleared properties without licenses can be legalized retroactively without restoring the land or ecological conditions.

This contradiction reveals the political limits of Amazon success. Government efficiency in law enforcement collides with structural economic interests and long-term infrastructure projects that continue to fragment the ecosystem.

A Global Demonstration with Geopolitical Resonance

The Amazon Fund surpassed 4.98 billion reais in internalized donations from nine sovereign donors, disbursing at a record pace of over one billion reais in approved projects during the first half of 2025. The Belém COP30 added a Tropical Forests Forever Mechanism worth 125 billion dollars that could generate approximately 4 billion dollars annually for more than 70 tropical forest nations.

Brazil demonstrates that a determined state can reverse a catastrophic environmental trajectory in just a few years. This lesson resonates far beyond the Amazon, at a time when global climate policies often prioritize market mechanisms over direct public action.

The Brazilian experience proves that effective environmental governance rests on three pillars: restored institutional capacity, rigorous law enforcement, and interministerial coordination. Together, the year has shown that forest outcomes now depend less on isolated interventions than on governments’ and institutions’ capacity to maintain continuity—of funding, governance, science, and monitoring—under mounting environmental and political pressure.