In the last 50 years, 20 percent of the world's ancient forests have been cleared. The primary causes of forest loss and degradation vary from region to region. They include agricultural expansion, mining, settlement, shifting agriculture, plantation establishment and infrastructural development.

Top name brands implicated in Amazon destruction

The Greenpeace report “Slaughtering the Amazon” is the product of a three-year investigation into Brazil’s cattle industry, the country’s chief source of CO2 emissions and the largest single driver of deforestation anywhere in the world. Our investigation exposed the Brazilian government’s complicity in bankrolling deforestation in the Amazon, as well as several top name shoe brands – such as Adidas, Nike, Reebok, and Timberland – whose demand for leather may be supporting cattle ranchers that are illegally slaughtering the Amazon.
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Putting cattle impacts on the map

At the World Social Forum in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, we’ve released evidence confirming cattle ranching to be the biggest driver of Amazon deforestation. Greenpeace Brazil has produced a series of maps that show in greater detail than ever before the direct links between cattle ranching and forest destruction in the Amazon state of Mato Grosso.
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Putting soy impacts on the map

Monitoring the effects of deforestation on the Amazon is a difficult undertaking. The Amazon is so large that it's extremely difficult to keep tabs on what's happening in the remote fringes of the rainforest. News of illegal logging and the spread of soy plantations can take a long time to reach the authorities — assuming it ever reaches them at all. That's why our team in Brazil has been working with local communities to map the impacts of the soy industry in the Santarém region of the forest, the heart of soy production in the Amazon.
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Greenpeace launches Forests for Climate

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza arrived in Jakarta on the morning of October 29th to help launch the Forests for Climate initiative, Greenpeace’s pioneering solution to reduce deforestation, tackle climate change, preserve global biodiversity, and protect the livelihoods of millions of forest-dependent people. Forests for Climate (FFC) is Greenpeace’s landmark proposal for an international mechanism to fund sustainable and lasting reductions of emissions from tropical deforestation in participating countries in order to meet commitments for the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol.
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