Brazil holds the largest share of the Amazon: a continental forest of many states and peoples, and the arena where decisions on land, agriculture, energy, mining and infrastructure shape the whole biome. This is our standing orientation to the region and a map to our reporting.
What is the Brazilian Amazon?
“The Brazilian Amazon” is used three different ways, and we keep them distinct: the Amazon biome (an ecological region), Amazônia Legal (Brazil’s statutory planning region) and the Amazon basin (a hydrological system). Deforestation and enforcement figures are usually reported for Amazônia Legal or the biome, so we state the basis whenever it matters.
The territory and its states
Amazônia Legal spans nine states: Amazonas, Pará, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima, Amapá, Mato Grosso, Tocantins and Maranhão. Their ecological coverage differs: Amazonas, Pará, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima and Amapá lie largely within the forest biome; Mato Grosso and Tocantins include large cerrado (savanna) transitions; Maranhão falls inside Amazônia Legal only west of the 44th meridian. We do not treat the nine states as uniform rainforest.
People and Indigenous territories
Many Indigenous peoples live across the Brazilian Amazon, with demarcated territories, pending demarcations and isolated (uncontacted) groups. We treat territorial rights, demarcation, the marco temporal dispute, and pressures from mining, logging, agriculture and infrastructure as substantive dimensions of every issue. Where our reporting carries Indigenous evidence or statements we attribute them; where it does not, we mark the gap rather than speak for communities. We do not publish sensitive locations of isolated peoples.
Background: Indigenous Communities. Recent reporting includes a court-ordered Tapayuna demarcation, a suspended Pataxó eviction, mining contamination on Waimiri-Atroari land, and the CPT record that the Legal Amazon accounts for over half of 2025 rural killings.
What is happening now
Canonical Brazilian Amazon developments, most recent first.
Current Brazilian Amazon developments will appear here as our live record grows; follow current items in the News Watch below.
Forests, climate and biodiversity
Deforestation, forest degradation, fire and intensifying drought are the central pressures, monitored by Brazil’s INPE (PRODES annual clearing and DETER alerts). Scientific work warns that deforestation combined with warming could push parts of the forest past a tipping point toward savanna. We report both losses and recoveries.
In depth: deforestation, warming and the tipping point · how fire changes regeneration.
Agriculture, cattle and soy
Cattle ranching is the largest direct driver of forest clearing in the Brazilian Amazon; soy expands mostly on already-cleared land and in the neighbouring Cerrado, exerting indirect pressure through land markets, roads and ports. Supply chains, financing and instruments such as the Soy Moratorium and cattle-tracing agreements shape how much clearing reaches global markets.
Related: Brazil, biofuels and land use.
Mining and critical minerals
The region holds legal industrial mining (notably iron ore at Carajás and bauxite) alongside widespread illegal gold mining (garimpo), which has driven mercury contamination and a humanitarian crisis on Yanomami and other Indigenous lands. A “critical minerals” policy push adds new pressure. We distinguish existing extraction, proposed projects, policy ambition and speculation.
Reporting: Tapajós gold permits · legal mining on Indigenous lands · the critical-minerals bill.
Oil and gas
The Foz do Amazonas / Equatorial Margin offshore frontier is a proposed exploration area under environmental review — a licensing and exploration question, not existing Amazon-mouth production. We report the government’s position and the environmental and Indigenous concerns without implying that drilling or production is under way.
Roads, railways, waterways and ports
Transport corridors open the forest to settlement and extraction, so their routes and licensing are decisive. Contested projects include the paving of BR-319 (Manaus–Porto Velho), the BR-163 soy corridor, the proposed Ferrogrão railway, and Amazon waterways (hidrovias) and ports. We separate existing infrastructure from proposed, unfinished or contested projects.
Related: a waterway and riverside communities · regional corridors in Geopolitics.
Hydroelectric dams
Large dams have reshaped Amazon rivers and the communities along them; Belo Monte on the Xingu, among the world’s largest, remains a reference case for licensing, river flow and Indigenous impacts. We follow dam licensing and operation as they arise rather than cataloguing every project.
In depth: Belo Monte, ten years on.
Law, politics and governance
Outcomes turn on the interaction of federal and state power, Congress, and the agencies: IBAMA (licensing and enforcement), ICMBio (protected areas) and FUNAI (Indigenous affairs), within Brazil’s land-tenure and environmental-licensing systems. The marco temporal (“time-frame”) dispute over Indigenous land rights remains legally and politically contested. We track where policy actually stands, not only what is announced.
Conservation and restoration
Protected areas, Indigenous lands (among the best-preserved forests), restoration efforts and community-led stewardship are part of the story alongside the threats. We report conservation outcomes with the same evidence standard we apply to harms.
Projects we are watching
Infrastructure, extractive and conservation projects we track, with current status.
Tracked Brazilian infrastructure, extractive and conservation projects will appear here as our record grows.
Indigenous perspective and evidence
An evidence surface: where our reporting carries evidence-supported relationships between developments and Indigenous peoples or communities, we show them with their evidence basis; where it is missing, we surface that as a reporting gap rather than manufacture a perspective.
Evidence-supported Indigenous/community relationships will appear here; absence is surfaced as a reporting gap.
Investigations and dossiers
Our deepest work lives in standing investigations and dossiers that accumulate evidence over time.
Standing Brazil investigations and dossiers will appear here as evidence accumulates.
Flagship reporting: the Pau-Brasil trade · Amazon-nations diplomacy · all Brazil coverage: Brazil archive.
Latest reporting
Our most recent Brazilian Amazon coverage.
Recent Brazilian Amazon reporting will appear here.
All coverage: News & Investigations · Brazil archive.
News Watch
Follow current developments across the region and its neighbours: Amazon News Watch · regional corridors and geopolitics in Geopolitics.
How our work connects
ColombianAmazon.com is the public platform of the Embajada de la Amazonia Colombiana, reporting across the Amazon’s nine nations. The Embassy.
