Brazil Forest Cuts Valued at $216 Billion

Between 2023 and 2026, lower deforestation in Brazil avoided an estimated 1.49 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, worth R$1.16 trillion, or US$216 billion at 2024 prices, economist Bráulio Borges of the Getulio Vargas Foundation estimated. That figure represents modeled global economic benefits, not money owed to Brazil. Borges published the estimate on Monday, October 19, 2026.

The value of forests

The National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, reported that Amazon deforestation from August 2025 to July 2026 reached 3,335 square kilometres. That’s 41.8% below the 5,731 square kilometres recorded a year earlier, and the lowest figure in a series that began in 1988. INPE said the figure relies on priority images and expects to publish the consolidated rate in the first half of 2027.

Clearing in the Cerrado dropped 23.8%, from 7,235.27 to 5,516.69 square kilometres, its lowest level since the series began in 2001. Pará lost 1,130 square kilometres of Amazon forest, Mato Grosso 849 and Amazonas 525. The four states in the Matopiba frontier made up 74.3% of Cerrado clearing. Maranhão lost 1,718.59 square kilometres of Cerrado and Tocantins 1,263.06.

Borges said Amazon clearing stood 71% below the 11,594 square kilometres recorded in 2022. Across the Amazon and Cerrado together, clearing fell from 22,300 square kilometres in 2022 to 8,900 in 2026, a drop of about 60%. Compared with the 2019-to-2022 average of about 19,700 square kilometres a year, roughly 22,300 square kilometres remained uncleared from 2023 to 2026—an area slightly larger than Sergipe.

Who receives the benefit

Borges calculated that avoided emissions amount to about 70% of Brazil’s gross emissions of 2.15 billion tonnes in 2024. His central estimate uses a social cost of carbon of US$145 per tonne, the average from studies published over the previous 10 years in a database maintained by University of Sussex economist Richard Tol. At yearly average exchange rates, the calculation comes to R$1.16 trillion, or US$216 billion at 2024 prices.

The carbon price changes the result. Using the median of recent studies gives an estimate of US$115 billion, or R$621 billion. A 2026 paper by Bilal and Känzig in the Quarterly Journal of Economics would put the figure at R$9.8 trillion, about US$1.8 trillion. Borges called that estimate controversial because it extrapolates from data covering 1960 to 2019.

For Brazil’s domestic economy, Borges estimated a gain of US$12.4 billion, or R$67 billion, using a local carbon cost of about US$8.3 per tonne. Applying a national value of US$24 per tonne from a 2018 paper in Nature Climate Change raises the estimate to US$36 billion, or R$192 billion. Much of the benefit, he said, comes from damage avoided, including fewer crop losses and less heat stress on workers—costs no official statistic records.

Borges’s estimate leaves out the forest’s effect on regional rainfall. A study he cited put that value at about US$20 billion a year, or roughly US$60 per hectare of Amazon forest. He argued that farm growth can go hand in hand with reduced deforestation because agribusiness benefits from rain generated by the forest.

State action and payment limits

The federal government credited satellite monitoring, inspections, land-tenure measures and farm incentives under two action plans restored in 2023 for the decline. From 2023 to 2026, the environment agency Ibama carried out 76,095 inspections and issued 25,101 fines for offenses against flora, worth R$11.8 billion, or US$2.4 billion. It also embargoed 18,630 square kilometres, according to INPE’s release.

The Amazon Fund, run by development bank BNDES, had approved 160 projects and committed R$7.8 billion, or US$1.6 billion, in October 2026. On October 16, the fund announced R$147.6 million, or US$29 million, for an INPE system that uses artificial intelligence to combine yearly Prodes counts with near-real-time Deter alerts.

Borges said the global benefit exceeds the amount Brazil receives from the Amazon Fund, carbon credit markets and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility launched at the COP30 climate summit in Belém in 2025. He described those payments as “a very small fraction” of the estimated gains.

The US$216 billion estimate assumes clearing would have stayed at the 2019-to-2022 average without the policy change from 2023. Emissions for 2025 and 2026 use modeled figures, drawing on official emissions data through 2024. The sources don’t establish whether deforestation’s decline will continue or how much of the reported fines Brazil has collected.