The Brazilian Amazon covers about 5 million square kilometers (59% of Brazil), with significant socioeconomic and natural differences within its territory. Although complex and heterogeneous, the Brazilian Amazon can be divided into five major zones based on the remaining vegetation cover. In turn, each of these zones is associated with specific public policies for it to thrive.

We adopted the methodology originally developed by Imazon in 2007 for defining such zones, in which each of the 772 municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon was classified based on vegetation cover and deforestation. This analysis produced four major zones: zone 1, “The Forested Brazilian Amazon”, zone 2 ,“The Brazilian Amazon with Forest Under Pressure”, zone 3, “The Deforested Brazilian Amazon” (that is, originally forested, but that have lost a large part of its forest), and zone 4, “The Non-Forested Brazilian Amazon” (the vast majority of this area is covered by savanna-type vegetation and natural grasslands). We recently updated this analysis to incorporate new deforestation data available through the National Institute for Space Research’s (INPE) Prodes Project and to define a fifth major zone: zone 5, “The Urban Brazilian Amazon”.

The zone 4, “The Non-Forested Brazilian Amazon” is comprised of municipalities whose original vegetation cover was mostly savannas. The other four zones correspond to municipalities that originally had more than 50% of their territory covered by forests. Considering these four zones, zone 3, “The Deforested Brazilian Amazon”, corresponds to municipalities that have lost more than 70% of their original forest, excluding Protected Areas (Conservation Units and/or Indigenous Lands). In contrast, zone 1 “The Forested Brazilian Amazon”, is comprised of municipalities that lost less than 5% of their original forest cover. The municipalities in zone 2, “The Brazilian Amazon with Forest Under Pressure”, retain large forest cover (>75% of their territory is still forest) but recently have been undergoing an accelerated process of deforestation. To define areas belonging to zone 5, “The Urban Brazilian Amazon”, we rely on the criteria used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) on the location of urban centers and the population residing in these areas.

The public policies recommendations for each of the zones are not mutually exclusive. Some of the proposals can be adopted in all zones, such as participation in the forest carbon market through the REDD+ mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and the creation and consolidation of Protected Areas.

In turn, forest restoration (planting of native trees) is more suitable in the deforested and forested under pressure zones. Improving agricultural productivity is a key action throughout the Brazilian Amazon, but it is a priority especially in the deforested zone.

In the forest under pressure zone the priority must be to fight illegal land grabbing of public forests. Enforcement of laws against deforestation and forest degradation (predatory logging, forest fires, etc.), although necessary throughout the Brazilian Amazon, are more needed in the forest under pressure and in the deforested zones.