Brazilian Amazon fires drop to record low in 2025
A historic drop in Brazilian Amazon fires offers relief for global climate targets, though a looming El Niño threatens to reverse the progress that European supply chains rely on.
Forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon fell to a historic low in 2025, with satellite data showing 3.1 million hectares burned. This is the smallest area since records began in 1985, according to environmental monitoring network MapBiomas.
For European policymakers and investors, the data provides a rare positive signal in the continent's climate and trade calculations. Brazil is a major agricultural trading partner, and unchecked degradation threatens to disrupt commodity markets and derail global emissions targets. "There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said.
The decline was driven by a combination of political shifts and favourable weather. Deforestation has steadily eased since Lula took office in 2022, reducing the dry fuel available for fires. A delayed rainy season between 2024 and 2025 also closed the typical window for using fire to clear agricultural land.
Additionally, communities traumatized by the 2024 fire season actively worked to prevent outbreaks. That year, an unprecedented drought fuelled human-made fires that destroyed vast amounts of carbon-absorbing forest. Report coordinator Ane Alencar described the 2025 reversal as "out of the ordinary".
Lula’s environmental crackdown marks a sharp turn from his predecessor. Under Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation hit an all-time high, with 9,762 square kilometres cleared in 2019 alone—a 30 per cent increase from the previous year. Since taking power, Lula saw deforestation drop by 68 per cent by April 2023, hitting its lowest rate this decade in early 2026.
El Niño threatens progress
However, meteorological risks threaten to undermine these gains. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts a 62 per cent chance of El Niño forming this summer, with a one-in-three chance of a strong event by late 2026. Alencar warned that such a "super El Niño" could bring an extended dry season and a greater risk of forest fires.
Fires eased off across Brazil overall, reaching their smallest nationwide footprint since 2018. Yet the vast Cerrado savanna in central Brazil "kept burning" at similar rates, highlighting that agricultural pressures have simply shifted to a different biome.
"Let’s fight for zero deforestation," Lula said in his 2022 victory speech, pledging to end the practice by 2030. He is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term in October elections, though his climate credibility is complicated by his endorsement of a major offshore oil exploration project near the Amazon.
