In the last 15 years, Paraguay lost a greater share of its forest than almost any other country on Earth. While soy farming once drove deforestation in the east, the focus of Paraguay's forest loss has since moved west to the low-lying, thorn-forested Chaco, where cattle ranching has claimed over 3.7 million hectares (9 million acres) of forest for pastureland – an area about the size of the Netherlands – between 2001 and 2015.

Introduction

The Deforestation and Forest Degradation in the Amazon Biome map was produced by Imazon in order to contribute towards monitoring in the region. The methodology applied simultaneously generates mapping of deforestation and forest degradation [caused by logging activity and forest burning] using Landsat satellite images. Existing methods individually detect and map those processes, which can lead to overlaps in the results and increasing uncertainty in estimates of annual deforestation rates.

By Kathleen Buckingham

Trees have become an iconic image of environmentalism, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we should plant millions of them.

Commercial agriculture has driven land use changes and not only affected millions of hectares of forested land, but also farmers’ and local people’s land rights. Efforts to combat deforestation are at the forefront of the international aid agenda, and clarifying and securing land rights is important for its success.

The Santa Clara de Uchunya community has lived in a remote section of the Peruvian Amazon for generations. Like many indigenous groups, this community of the Shipibo-Konibo people have traditionally managed and relied on forests for hunting, fishing and natural resources.

But in 2014, someone started cutting down large sections of the community’s ancestral forests.