Brazil is home to the largest stretch of tropical rainforest on Earth. The Amazon rainforest alone covers roughly 40% of Brazil’s total land area, and a second major rainforest, the Atlantic Forest, runs along the country’s eastern coast. Together, these two biomes make Brazil the most rainforest-rich nation in the world.
The Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon rainforest spans about 2.3 million square miles across northern South America, and Brazil holds approximately 60% of it. That means the Brazilian Amazon alone is larger than the entire European Union. The forest fills the drainage basin of the Amazon River and its tributaries, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the foothills of the Andes in the west, with the Brazilian central plateau forming its southern boundary.
Rainfall drives the system. The Amazon Basin averages 6 to 10 feet of rain per year, with a wet season running roughly from December to May when monthly totals can exceed 8 inches. Even in August, the driest month, the basin still receives around 2 inches. That constant moisture sustains an almost incomprehensible density of life: a verified species list published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences counted 14,003 seed plant species in the Amazonian lowland rainforest alone, including 6,727 tree species. About half the plant diversity comes from shrubs, small trees, vines, and herbs growing beneath the canopy.
The Atlantic Forest
Most people associate Brazil with the Amazon, but the Atlantic Forest is a separate and equally remarkable rainforest biome. It stretches along Brazil’s eastern coast from the northeast down to the south, extending inland into parts of Argentina and Paraguay. In the northeast, it occupies a thin coastal strip no wider than about 40 miles. In the south, it reaches as far as 200 miles inland.
What makes the Atlantic Forest unusual is how much life it packs into relatively small spaces. A single hectare (about 2.5 acres) can support 450 tree species. Seven percent of the world’s plant species and 5% of its vertebrate animal species live here, and many are endemic, meaning they exist nowhere else. Since 1990, researchers have documented more than 30 new mammal species, 9 bird species, and roughly 100 frog species in the Atlantic Forest.
This forest also sits beneath some of Brazil’s largest cities, including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Around 150 million people live within the Atlantic Forest ecoregion, and it generates 70% of Brazil’s GDP. Sixty percent of Brazil’s population depends on it for drinking water.
How Much Forest Remains
The two rainforests face very different situations. The Amazon, while under pressure, is still largely intact. Between August 2024 and July 2025, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached 5,796 square kilometers, an 11% drop compared to the previous year. That decline follows years of effort to expand protected areas and strengthen enforcement.
The Atlantic Forest is in far worse shape. Five hundred years ago it covered roughly 330 million acres, an area about twice the size of Texas. Today, only about 12% of the original forest in Brazil remains, scattered in small, disconnected fragments. Less than 2% of the entire biome is formally protected. Despite that, what survives is still among the most biologically diverse forests on the planet. It also holds the grim distinction of having the most threatened species of any Brazilian biome: 2,845 species are classified as threatened, and at least 8 species have already gone extinct, including the Pernambuco pygmy owl and the cryptic treehunter.
Why Brazil’s Rainforests Matter Globally
Tropical forests worldwide absorb nearly 16 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and store an estimated 861 gigatonnes of carbon in their branches, leaves, roots, and soils. The Amazon is the single largest piece of that puzzle. Research estimates that tropical forests collectively hold back more than 1 degree Celsius of atmospheric warming. About 75% of that cooling comes from carbon storage alone, while the remaining 25% results from shading, pumping moisture into the atmosphere, and generating cloud cover.
When rainforest is cleared, that stored carbon enters the atmosphere. In the Brazilian Amazon, most deforestation is driven by land conversion for cattle ranching and soy farming. The loss isn’t just a carbon problem. It fragments habitat, disrupts rainfall patterns that communities depend on for agriculture, and degrades the water systems that supply major cities downstream.
Indigenous Territories and Conservation
One of the most effective tools for keeping Brazil’s rainforests standing has been the recognition of indigenous land rights. Studies show that securing land tenure for indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon can reduce deforestation by up to 66%. Indigenous territories function as conservation zones not because they’re fenced off, but because the communities living there actively manage and defend the forest.
That protection has weakened in recent years. Deforestation inside indigenous territories increased 129% from 2013 onward, and between 2019 and 2021 it was 195% higher than in the preceding five-year period, pushing deeper into the interior of those territories. Roughly 59% of all carbon emissions from indigenous territories between 2013 and 2021 (about 96 million tonnes of CO₂) occurred in the final three years of that period. Researchers tied the spike to rollbacks in environmental regulations and weakened enforcement of indigenous land protections.
Forest Products and Local Livelihoods
Brazil’s rainforests aren’t just ecologically significant. They support millions of people economically through forest products that don’t require cutting trees down. Rubber, Brazil nuts, and açaí are among the best-known examples. The concept of “extractive reserves,” areas where traditional communities harvest these products while serving as stewards of the land, originated with Amazonian rubber tappers in the state of Acre in the 1970s. These reserves operate on the premise that communities gathering forest products can protect the environment more effectively than intensive land uses like cattle ranching, while still earning a livelihood from the forest.