Brazil’s shrinking rain forest

The country with the world’s largest rain forests is preparing to enact regulations that opponents say could speed up deforestation and increase greenhouse gas emissions.

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Amazonian rain forest is burned to create pasture land for ranching in Brazil. For two years, Brazil has been debating how to update a 1965 law that was designed to control slash-and-burn agriculture.

/ Mauri Rautkari / WWF-Canon

Brazilian rain forest is burned to make way for ranching. A 1965 law requires landholders in the Amazon to have forest cover 80 percent of their land, a rule that has been strengthened over time through additional myriad regulations. Proponents of the new law say it would protect the Amazon while easing the regulatory burden on small farmers.

/ Mauri Rautkari / WWF-Canon

Wetlands in the Amazon. The proposed new forest law would do away with restrictions on the clearing of trees from riverbanks and hillsides, by measuring buffer regions based on river flows during the dry season rather than the rainy season. It also would shield farmers in the Amazon with up to 1,087 acres of land from fines and other legal penalties for having deforested before July 2008..

/ Michel Roggo / WWF-Canon

A jaguar rests in a tree in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands. Opponents of Brazil's proposed rain forest rules say they threaten to undermine the country's credibility on climate change, an issue on which Brazil has fashioned itself as a global leader.

/ Y.-J. Rey-Millet / WWF-Canon

An aerial view of the flooded rain forest during rainy season in Brazil's Rio Negro Forest Reserve. The new rain forest rules would slacken restrictions on the clearing of trees from riverbanks and hillsides by measuring buffer regions based on river flows during the dry season instead of the rainy season.

/ Michel Roggo / WWF-Canon

A herd of cows stands in a burned rain forest in Conceicao, Brazil. Globally, deforestation accounts for about 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and in Brazil, it is the largest single driver of emissions.

/ Mauri Rautkari / WWF-Canon

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