At just over 519 million hectares, Brazil has the largest remaining area of tropical forest in the world. The Brazilian Amazon covers an area of 41o million hectares, accounting for 48% of the country’s total area. Although Brazil has several other large forest biomes including the Atlantic Forest, the “Cerrado” (savannah), the “Caatinga” (common vegetation in arid zones), the Brazilian Amazon is often used as a proxy for Brazil’s tropical forests. The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is among the highest globally. In recent years, however, its deforestation rates have dropped from around 1.9 million hectares per year in 2005 (equivalent to 0.46% per year) to 0.6 million hectares per year in 2010 (~0.15% per year). 

In 2008, at the fourteenth Conference of the...