Deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon : status and trends up to year 2021

The Amazon forest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, which houses about 10% of the Earth's biodiversity and 16% of the world's total river discharge into the oceans. However, the Amazon forest has already lost up to 20% of its original area since the 1970s and is under constant threat of ongoing deforestation and forest degradation. Disturbances in the forest cover lead to carbon emissions, endanger the livelihoods of indigenous people, and threaten biodiversity in the Amazon. In 2021, according to the JRC-TMF data, the Pan-Amazon region showed a 37% decrease in forest disturbances (comprising deforestation and forest degradation) compared to the previous year (23,383 km2 of new disturbances in 2021 vs. 37,293 km2 in 2020). This decrease can be mainly explained by the decrease in forest fires in 2021, which apparently has been a year of high precipitation during the 'fire season' (July-November) in the Southern and Eastern Amazon regions. However, the decrease of burned areas in 2021 has been measured also in many other Amazon countries, leading to a significant decrease of forest disturbances in Colombia (38%), Brazil (38%), Ecuador (39%), Bolivia (59%), and Venezuela (85%). In addition to the statistics of year 2021, the report provides an overview regarding the deforestation and forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon for the first seven months in 2022 (January - July), as reported by the INPE-DETER alert system. It shows a deforestation increase of 7% compared to the previous year, while forest degradation increased by 27% for the same period. A second, independent deforestation alert system for the Brazilian Amazon, IMAZON SAD, reports a 19% increase of deforestation for the period from January to June 2022.