[12] Unlike the Amazon, which has only faced extreme deforestation in recent years, the Atlantic Forest has been a long-lasting target for land development, speculation, and agricultural endeavors.

Starting during the sixteenth century, the forest began facing pressure due to the unsustainable development of coffee, sugarcane, brazilwood, and cattle in the region.

Everything which has up to now been done in Amazonas, whether in agriculture or extractive industry... must be transformed into rational exploitation.Before the 1960s, much of the forest remained intact due to restrictions on access to the Amazon beyond partial clearing along the river banks.

[16] Amazonian colonization was dominated by cattle raising, not only because grass did grow in the poor soil, but also because ranching required little labor, generated decent profit, and awarded social status.

[22] Under this model, with a strong focus on commodities exports, deforestation is an economic choice, often linked to cattle ranching, mining, soybean production or logging, and influenced by factors raising the external competitiveness of Amazonian farmers, ranging from infrastructure development (especially roads) to a depreciating real exchange rate.

Brazilian beef was more competitive on the world market at a time when extensive improvements in the road network in the Amazonas (such as the introduction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway in the early 1970s) gave potential developers access to vast areas of previously inaccessible forest.

[37][38][39][40] Cargill, a multinational company which controls the majority of the soya bean trade in Brazil, has been criticized, along with fast food chains like McDonald's, by Greenpeace for accelerating the deforestation of the Amazon.

Cargill is the main supplier of soya beans to large fast food companies such as McDonald's which use the soy products to feed their cattle and chickens.

"[44] In 2020, the Amsterdam Declarations Partnership (which includes Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, Norway, the UK and the Netherlands) sent an open letter to vice president Hamilton Mourão, stating that Brazil's backwards moves in environmental protection were threatening Europe's desire to source its food sustainably.

In 2005, soybean prices fell by more than 25 percent and some areas of Mato Grosso showed a decrease in large deforestation events, although the central agricultural zone continued to clear forests.

[46] This new driver of forest loss suggests that the rise and fall of prices for other crops, beef and timber may also have a significant impact on future land use in the region, according to the study.

“The trend line is shooting upward compared to a year that was already historic in terms of a rise in deforestation,” said federal prosecutor Ana Carolina Haliuc Bragança.“If state entities don’t adopt very decisive measures, we’re looking at a likely tragedy.”[63] Climate change plays a significant role in the wildfires in the Pantanal.

It has been suggested by modeling studies that the deforestation may be approaching a "tipping point", after which large-scale "savannization" or desertification of the Amazon will take place, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, due to a self-perpetuating collapse of the region's biodiversity and ecosystems.

A WRI report mentions that “tenure-secure” indigenous lands generates billions and sometimes trillions of dollars’ worth of benefits in the form of carbon sequestration, reduced pollution, clean water and more.

In August 2019, smoke from wildfires in Brazil's rainforests became so thick that it arrived in São Paulo and plunged the city into darkness in the middle of the day for an hour, prompting the spread of the hashtag "prayforamazonia" on social media.

[84] The deforestation of the Amazon has already had a significant negative impact on Brazil's freshwater supply, harming, among others, the agricultural industry that has contributed to the clearing of the forests.

For example, the rainy season has been shortened by 15 – 30 days in 40 years, the amount of rainfall decreased, the harvest became lower in many areas, the mega dam Belo Monte can produce less power.

[91][92] In 2019, a group of scientists published research suggesting that in a "business as usual" scenario, the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest would raise the temperature in Brazil by 1.45 degrees.

The first step of the process comes from international trade flow data, which is used to compute the differential growth in Chinese demand for each product (excluding Brazil).

Regions that were heavily impacted by both trade and technology shocks saw less deforestation and slower cropland expansion compared to areas that were only influenced by genetically engineered (GE) soy.

This suggests that the deforestation effects of GE soy are mitigated in areas with greater exposure to technological advancements and increased demand from China.

In comparison with areas still unaffected by deforestation, they found a significant increase in cloud cover and rainfall during the August–September wet season where the forest had been cleared.

[99] In 2018, Brazil released its worst annual deforestation figures in a decade amid fears that the situation might worsen when the avowedly anti-environmentalist president-elect Jair Bolsonaro took power.

Between August 2017 and July 2018, 7,900 km2 were deforested, according to preliminary figures from the environment ministry based on satellite monitoring – a 13.7% rise from the previous year and the biggest area of forest cleared since 2008.

[106] Estimates of the rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest from 1970 to 2022 are given in the table below, based on data from the National Institute for Space Research and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Plans for the compensated reduction (CR) of greenhouse gas emissions from tropical forests were set up to give nations like Brazil an incentive to curb their rate of deforestation.

[109] On May 11, 1994, NASA scientists, Compton Tucker and David Skole concluded that satellite observations showed a reduction in the rate of forest removal between 1992 and 1993 and that World Bank estimates of 600,000 square km2 (12%) cleared to that point appeared to be too high.

The measures include: To diminish deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, some organisations have argued that large financial resources are required to give illegal loggers an economic incentive to pursue other areas of activity.

The goal is to plant 120,000 trees, use agroforestry to reduce deforestation, help diversify forest fruit production, store carbon to fight climate change, and provide food security.

The project should benefit from multiple environmental problems caused by deforestation like conserving biodiversity, improving the water cycle and generating income for the local population from the sale of non-wood products and fruit providing more food security.