Leia em português: Link
20 years ago, The Amazon forest was under unrelenting pressure from agricultural expansion. The establishment of Brazil's Soy Moratorium in 2006 drew a line in the sand and placed a strict cut-off date for deforestation on areas that would be planted to soy. In its first 10 years of implementation alone, the moratorium saved at least 1.8 Mha of Amazon forest. Now, this landmark Zero-Deforestation policy is on life support.
The Moratorium has been a cornerstone of Brazil’s efforts to fight deforestation, fulfill its declared emissions reductions goals (NDC), and further claim its position as a global conservation powerhouse, especially as the country gears up to host the UN’s COP30 climate conference and launch the highly anticipated Tropical Forests Forever Facility.
However, a pair of mortal wounds threaten to end or substantially modify the Moratorium:
Proponents of dismantling the Moratorium have long argued that it is unfair and unnecessary, since deforestation is already regulated by Brazil’s Forest Code. They see the Moratorium as a threat to Brazil’s sovereignty —a largely foreign-imposed restriction that limits their right to legally clear forest and plant soy. These actors argue that the agreement effectively reduces opportunities for the sector to grow and attend to global markets.
However, the evidence that the Moratorium remains a good deal for Brazil is strong.
Our previously published work demonstrated that ending the Moratorium would bring little benefit to soy farmers. Recent updates to these results confirm that the change would free up only a tiny fraction of land on soy farms (amounting to around 1% of the current soy area). This includes areas that were legally cleared after the Moratorium’s 2008 cut-off date and those that could still be legally cleared. Only around 200 of the roughly 20,000 soy farms in the Amazon would be affected were the Moratorium ended.
Illegal clearing, on the other hand, is rampant on soy farms. Nearly 5,000 soy farms (around a quarter of all soy farms in the Amazon), producing about a third of the Amazon’s soy, have deforested illegally since 2008. Many of them are not in violation of the Soy Moratorium , which applies only on the specific fields where soy is grown. However, they could be excluded from the market if access suddenly required compliance with Brazil’s Forest Code instead of the Moratorium, as advocates of ending the Moratorium propose.
The real forest conservation power of the Moratorium is in how it reduces the value of deforestation, especially beyond soy farms. By removing soy farmers—the highest paying land buyers—from the market for newly cleared lands and encouraging them to expand onto the millions of hectares that were already cleared before 2008, the Moratorium has devalued speculative clearing, and resulted in a measurable reduction in deforestation. In fact, given that 90% of deforestation in the Amazon is illegal, the Moratorium largely serves to reinforce the Forest Code, and does not block access to a substantial amount of legally cleared land, contrary to claims by Moratorium critics.
Rather than eliminating effective tools like the Soy Moratorium, policies and mechanisms that reduce economic incentives for clearing must be strengthened and expanded across Brazil’s soy and cattle sectors . The challenges that Brazil faces in enforcing the Forest Code, and the frequent efforts to weaken environmental legislation and legalize more clearing, underscore the critical role of Zero-Deforestation supply chain commitments like the Moratorium as stop-gaps that ensure continued access to discerning markets and consumers.
The evidence is clear: pulling the plug on the Soy Moratorium is a bad deal for Brazil’s soy sector and Brazil’s forests.