Climate Threat Threat to the Amazon

Amazon Agreement Protections Abolished – Risk of Deforestation

The soy moratorium, one of the most important agreements for protecting the Amazon, has been torn up by Brazil’s competition authority Cade, reports The Guardian.

The agreement, signed in 2006, prohibits soy buyers and food companies from buying land in the Amazon that has recently been deforested.

The cancellation of the agreement risks deforesting an area the size of Portugal. Cristiane Mazzetti, who is responsible for the issue at Greenpeace Brazil, calls it a “terrible mistake.”

“Soy will once again become a driving force for the deforestation of the Amazon and this will destroy Brazil’s chances of achieving its climate goals,” she tells The Guardian.

WWF: Timing for COP30 sends “wrong signals”

The lifting of the so-called soy moratorium, three months before the UN climate summit COP30 in Brazil, sends “wrong signals” according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

– After a summer of fires and extreme heat all over the world, we need to protect the Amazon more than ever, says Tanya Steele, chairwoman of WWF in the UK to The Guardian.

The timing is considered embarrassing for President Lula da Silva, who had hoped to show progress on deforestation in the Amazon during COP30.

The soy moratorium, which has stopped soy buyers and food companies from buying land that was recently deforested, has been in place since 2006. According to several non-governmental organizations, deforestation decreased by 69 percent between 2009 and 2022 in areas covered by the soy moratorium, writes the newspaper O Globo.