Abstract

Since the 1960s, almost 20 percent of the Amazon has been deforested. Eighty percent of this deforestation has taken place in Brazil, which has two-thirds of the Amazon within its borders. Land conversion for creating cattle farms has been responsible for 70 per cent of deforestation (Malhi et al. 2008: 169), although some 60–80 percent of all logging in the Brazilian Amazon is illegal (Boekhout van Solinge 2010b: 272). Land conversion for soy cultivation is a second and more recent cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.