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Conservation Efforts and Achievements
Brazil’s soy exports grew from 2.5 million tons in 1990 to 31.4 million tons by 2010. The second largest driver of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazonian forests, the beef and leather industry, grew steadily from roughly 300,000 tons produced per year in 1997 to 1,200,000 tons per year in 2006 and is currently at just over 1,000,000 tons per year. This increase in soy and cattle production strongly coincided with Brazil’s continual rise in CO2 emissions due to land use change. Deforestation in Brazil declined from an average of 19,500 sq. km per year prior to 2005 to 5,843 sq. km in 2013, which is a 70% reduction.

From the 1990’s through 2004, the Brazilian Forest Code (FC) was the primary and most prolific legal restriction of forest clearing on private lands. The FC established that 50% of each private property must be managed as forest reserve and retain its natural composition. However, in 1996 the minimum required reserve proportion was increased to 80%. While this seemed a protective change, it has been difficult to accurately detect illegal land use, which makes enforcement extremely difficult.

The profitability of soy production in Brazil drastically fell from 2005-2006, which resulted in a reduction in the amount of land planted with soy in the Brazilian Amazon. In 2004, the Detection of Deforestation in Real Time (DETER) was launched, which provided a system for detecting and responding to events of deforestation. Greenpeace, a highly active NGO working in the Amazon, released their report Eating up the Amazon in 2006, which revealed connections between the soybean industry and deforestation, climate change and water pollution. This lead to a multi-tier attack on all levels of the supply chain on the Brazilian Amazon soy industry, which lead to a “Soy Moratorium” that was joined by the majority of the companies that purchase Amazon soybeans. The moratorium prevented farmers who grew soy on land cleared after 26 July 2006 from selling to companies that have chosen to partake in the moratorium. Also, strong political leadership and national commitment to expand protected areas through the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program resulted in a 68% increase in protected areas and indigenous territories from 2004- 2012. Many of these newly protected areas were created in active agricultural frontiers.

Since 2005 the annual rate of deforestation in Brazil has continued to decline while soy and beef production have continued to rise. Greenpeace once again in 2009, initiated a campaign directed at the Brazilian beef- processing company, Bertin. This led to the “Cattle Agreement”, in which the regions biggest meat processing companies chose to participate in and agreed to not purchase livestock from producers who deforested their land after October 2009. Multi-tier attacks on the soy and beef industries supply chains, the expansion of protected areas and the implementation of new laws and policies along with the aid of many NGO’s, indigenous tribes and scientists; Brazil has made substantial progress in conserving their remaining 80% of Amazonian forests.