Brazil's Amazon lost area the size of Spain in 40 years

Brazil's Amazon rainforest has shrunk by an area as big as Spain over four decades and is nearing a dangerous tipping point, according to monitoring data released Monday. Satellite images studied by the MapBiomas monitoring platform showed the loss of 49.1 million hectares of rainforest between 1985 and 2024.

Brazil, which will host the UN COP30 climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belem in November, is home to 60 percent of the rainforest which spans nine countries. If other types of plant life are included, the Amazon has lost 13 percent of its native vegetation in that time, the data showed. MapBiomas said that livestock farming had increased almost fivefold in the period studied.