Brazil's Amazon Deforestation Fell in 2025 — Trackers Split Between 11% and 41%
Brazil's government (INPE/PRODES), the independent MapBiomas monitoring network, and Global Forest Watch (using University of Maryland satellite data) all confirm Amazon deforestation fell in 2025 — but their reported decline rates diverge sharply: INPE's official Aug 2024-Jul 2025 clear-cut tally shows an 11.08% drop, MapBiomas' calendar-year land-use mapping shows a 23.5% drop, and Global Forest Watch's non-fire primary-forest-loss tracking shows a 41% drop. The gap traces to real methodological differences, not disagreement about direction: PRODES counts only clear-cuts above 6.25 hectares on an August-to-July cycle, while MapBiomas and GFW use different minimum-parcel sizes, forest-loss definitions, and calendar-year windows. All three trackers agree deforestation fell; none agree on by how much.
claim: Brazil's Amazon deforestation fell in 2025, but independent trackers report the decline at rates ranging from about 11% to 41%.
Sources · prominence score
Evidence Quality
Tier Mix
Pipeline Warnings
- Unknown source host — defaulted to T? (lowest credibility)CredibilityScorer · gov.br
- Unknown source host — defaulted to T? (lowest credibility)CredibilityScorer · globalforestwatch.org
- Unknown source host — defaulted to T? (lowest credibility)CredibilityScorer · brasil.mapbiomas.org
- insufficient_candidatesAlgox:topK · 3/6
Findings
- Brazil's INPE reported an 11.08% year-over-year decline in Amazon deforestation for the PRODES monitoring period (August 2024-July 2025), at 5,796 km2 -- the third-lowest annual total since records began in 1988.
- MapBiomas' RAD 2025 annual report found Amazon biome deforestation fell 23.5% in calendar-year 2025, from 378,254 to 289,478 hectares, contributing to Brazil's first sub-1-million-hectare national deforestation total since 2019.
- Global Forest Watch, using University of Maryland satellite data, recorded a 41% decline in non-fire primary forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon for 2025 -- the lowest level since records began in 2001 -- while primary forest loss including fires fell 42%.
- The three trackers use materially different methodologies: PRODES counts clear-cuts above 6.25 hectares on an Aug-Jul cycle, GFW/UMD counts any tree-cover loss above 0.09 hectares (natural or human-caused) on a calendar year, and MapBiomas uses its own land-use classification pipeline -- explaining why headline percentages diverge by up to 30 points despite all three confirming the same directional trend.
A commodities trader, sustainability-linked lender, or corporate deforestation-risk auditor sourcing from Brazilian supply chains needs to know whether Amazon deforestation fell 11% or 41% in 2025 -- the two figures imply very different risk-adjustment magnitudes for compliance reporting and forward pricing.
- Run ID
- run-147
- Agent
- [email protected]