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The Amazon rainforest faces a potential resurgence of deforestation amid growing efforts to overturn a long-standing protective ban.
The ban, which prohibits the sale of soybeans grown on land cleared after 2008, is widely credited with curbing deforestation and is considered a global environmental success.
However, powerful farming interests in Brazil, supported by a group of Brazilian politicians, are advocating for the restrictions to be lifted as the COP30 UN climate conference progresses.
Critics of the moratorium claim it is an unfair “cartel” that enables a select group of dominant companies to control the Amazon’s soybean trade.
Environmental groups warn that removing the ban would be a “disaster,” potentially triggering a fresh wave of land grabbing for soybean cultivation in the world’s largest rainforest.
Scientists caution that ongoing deforestation, combined with the impacts of climate change, is already pushing the Amazon towards a possible “tipping point” – a threshold beyond which the rainforest’s self-sustainability is imperiled.
Brazil stands as the world’s foremost producer of soybeans, a vital crop cultivated for its protein content and used extensively as animal feed.
A significant portion of meat consumed in the UK, including chicken, beef, pork, and farmed fish, is raised on feed that incorporates soybeans. Approximately 10% of these soybeans originate from the Brazilian Amazon.
Numerous major UK food corporations, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Aldi, Lidl, McDonald’s, Greggs, and KFC, are members of the UK Soy Manifesto, a coalition representing roughly 60% of the soy imported into the UK.
The group has expressed support for the ban, formally known as the Amazon Soy Moratorium, emphasizing its role in safeguarding UK soy supply chains from deforestation.
In a statement released earlier this year, the signatories called upon “all actors within the soy supply chain, including governments, financial institutions, and agribusinesses to reinforce their commitment to the [ban] and ensure its continuation.”
Public opinion in the UK also appears to strongly favor protecting the Amazon. A survey conducted by the World Wildlife Fund earlier this year revealed that 70% of respondents supported government action to eliminate illegal deforestation from UK supply chains.
However, Brazilian opponents of the agreement recently demanded that the Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, reopen an investigation into whether the moratorium constitutes anti-competitive behavior.
“Our state has lots of room to grow and the soy moratorium is working against this development,” Vanderlei Ataídes told the BBC. He is president of the Soya Farmers Association of Pará state, one of Brazil’s main soya producing areas.
“I don’t understand how [the ban] helps the environment,” he added. “I can’t plant soya beans, but I can use the same land to plant corn, rice, cotton or other crops. Why can’t I plant soya?”
The challenge has even divided the Brazilian government. While the Justice Ministry suggests there may be evidence of anti-competitive behavior, both the Ministry of the Environment and the Federal Public Prosecutors Office have publicly defended the moratorium.
The voluntary agreement was initially signed nearly two decades ago by farmers, environmental organizations, and major global food companies, including commodities giants such as Cargill and Bunge.
It emerged following a campaign by the environmental pressure group Greenpeace, which exposed the use of soybeans grown on deforested land in animal feed, including for chicken sold by McDonald’s.
The fast-food chain subsequently became a proponent of the moratorium, with signatories pledging not to purchase soybeans grown on land deforested after 2008.
Prior to the moratorium, forest clearing for soybean expansion and the growth of cattle ranching were the primary drivers of Amazonian deforestation.
Following the agreement’s implementation, forest clearance declined significantly, hitting a historic low in 2012 during President Lula’s second term in office.
Deforestation increased under subsequent administrations, particularly under Jair Bolsonaro, who advocated opening the forest to economic development, but has decreased again during Lula’s current presidency.
Bel Lyon, chief advisor for Latin America at the World Wildlife Fund, one of the agreement’s original signatories, warned that suspending the moratorium “would be a disaster for the Amazon, its people, and the world, because it could open up an area the size of Portugal to deforestation.”
Small farmers with plots adjacent to soy plantations report that the expansive cultivation disrupts local weather patterns, making it more challenging to grow their crops.
Raimundo Barbosa, who farms cassava and fruit near the town of Boa Esperança outside Santarém in the southeastern Amazon, says that when the forest is cleared “the environment is destroyed.”
“Where there is forest, it is normal, but when it is gone it just gets hotter and hotter and there is less rain and less water in the rivers,” he told me as we sat in the shade beside the machines he uses to turn his cassava into flour.
The push to lift the moratorium coincides with Brazil’s preparations to inaugurate a major new railway extending from its agricultural heartland in the south up into the rainforest.
The railway is projected to significantly reduce transport costs for soybeans and other agricultural products, consequently incentivizing further land clearing.
Scientists say deforestation is already profoundly reshaping the rainforest. Among those studying these shifts is Amazon specialist Bruce Fosberg, who has dedicated half a century to understanding the forest.
He ascends a narrow tower, 15 stories high, that rises 45 meters above a pristine rainforest reserve within the Amazon’s core. From a small platform at the summit, he surveys a verdant expanse stretching to the horizon.
The tower is equipped with advanced scientific instruments – sensors that meticulously track nearly all interactions between the forest and the atmosphere, observing water vapor, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and essential nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
The tower was erected 27 years ago and forms part of a project known as the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment (LBA), which strives to understand the trajectory of the Amazon’s changes and its proximity to a critical threshold.
Data generated by the LBA, alongside other scientific studies, indicate that certain regions of the rainforest may be approaching a “tipping point,” beyond which the ecosystem’s capacity to sustain its own functions is compromised.
“The living forest is closing down,” he says, “and not producing water vapour and therefore rainfall”.
As deforestation, fire, and heat stress claim trees, he explains, the forest releases less moisture into the atmosphere, consequently reducing rainfall and intensifying drought. This, in turn, establishes a feedback loop that causes further tree mortality.
The underlying concern is that if this trend continues, extensive rainforest areas could erode and transition into a savannah or arid grassland ecosystem.
Such a collapse would release enormous volumes of carbon, disrupt weather patterns across continents, and jeopardize the millions of people – as well as the countless plant, insect, and animal species – who depend on the Amazon for survival.
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