Antonio has spent the past seven years running toward fires that most others run from. A firefighter in the Brazilian Amazon since 2019, he works inside the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.
But things are changing, and fast. "2024 was the most extreme year for fires," Antonio said. "I had never seen anything like it. The forest burned like dry pasture - it was frightening for those of us who risk our lives to protect it."
What Antonio and his fellow firefighters are witnessing on the ground has been backed up by a new study. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have found that the policies that helped reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon over the past two decades have mostly failed to stop forest degradation: a slower and potentially more dangerous form of destruction. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Unlike deforestation, where whole areas of forests are cleared for farming, industry or infrastructure, a degraded forest still has trees standing. However, it has been so damaged by fire, illegal logging, fragmentation, droughts and over-hunting that it has lost much of its ecological value. The forest floor, stripped of shade and moisture, becomes a tinderbox.
"There's still a forest there, but it's so damaged that the carbon it once stored starts leaking, the animals have disappeared, and new grass species colonise the forest edges," said lead author Federico Cammelli from Cambridge's Department of Geography and the Conservation Research Institute. "Tropical forest fires are low intensity, flames often go undetected under the canopy, but after one or two years, trees die while standing, and the forest transforms into a cemetery of dead standing trees."
Earlier research found that between 2001 and 2018, net carbon emissions from forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon were comparable or even higher than those from deforestation itself. By 2050, degradation could affect the entire Brazilian Amazon, but it has barely featured in the policies meant to protect it.
Brazil has made real progress on deforestation. The first phase of the government's Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in the mid-2000s, reduced tree clearing by an estimated 60 to 80 percent. Agreements in the private sector - including a moratorium on soybeans from deforested land, and a commitment from meat packers not to source cattle from newly deforested areas - also contributed to the region's success.
However, the researchers found that four major policies meant to reduce deforestation across three Brazilian states did not reduce degradation.
When deforestation slows down, some degradation slows as well, since forests suffer less from so-called edge effects where cleared areas touch intact woodland. "However, we found no conclusive evidence that any of the supply chain policies, like the soy moratorium or the cattle agreements, tackled other big drivers of anthropogenic degradation, like fires, logging and fragmentation," said Cammelli.
In one case, the research suggests, even successful deforestation policies can make degradation worse. The G4 cattle agreement, signed by Brazil's four biggest meat packers, appeared to be linked to an increase in timber extraction: possibly because as cattle ranching became more regulated, some businesses switched to the less-regulated logging sector.
Back in Chico Mendes, Antonio sees some of the consequences of these gaps in policy. He said the dry season now lasts longer each year, forests are growing more fragile, and the rains arrive with sudden violence, washing out bridges and blocking roads.
He is not optimistic that the law is keeping up. "Environmental laws should be stricter, and offenders should be properly punished," he said. "If we lose the forest, we indirectly lose our lives."
Cammelli said that political will is vital. An update to Brazilian environmental policy published in 2023 includes forest degradation among the criteria for targeting environmental law enforcement towards municipalities with poor environmental records, along with requirements to reduce deforestation specifically.
"Fires often spread over many properties and entail complex liabilities: who is responsible for ignition, who for fire spread? They are best addressed at the landscape scale. The timber sector remains poorly regulated, and much can be done to crack down on illegal logging," he said.
The researchers are calling for a fundamental shift in how governments, companies and regulators think about how to best protect forests.
The EU Deforestation Regulation, which bans imports of products linked to forest destruction, defines degradation too narrowly, the researchers say, and largely overlooks the fire damage and fragmentation caused by soybean and beef production. The researchers are urging the EU to expand their definition of degradation.
Despite commitments on deforestation, the researchers found no publicly documented examples of companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon that had set concrete targets for specifically addressing forest degradation.
"Avoiding deforestation and degradation is so much more important for climate and nature than restoring what's already gone," said senior author Professor Rachael Garrett, also from Cambridge's Department of Geography and Conservation Research Institute. "There are certain things you can't get back."
"Every year," said Antonio, "the forest and wildlife become more vulnerable."
The research was supported in part by the European Union and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Reference:
Federico Cammelli et al. 'Deforestation-focused policies do not reduce degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2507793123
