Foreign investors, including asset management companies and pension funds, now own large stakes, which means that ordinary citizens in the United States and elsewhere are helping fund Amazon deforestation through their investments.
The vast and biodiverse Triunfo do Xingu protected area in the Brazilian Amazon lost 22 percent of its forest cover between 2007 and 2018, with figures this year indicating the rate of deforestation is accelerating.
Over the past decade there has been a rise in corporate zero-deforestation commitments, but very few companies have shown progress in meeting their goals of reducing deforestation in their supply chains by 2020.
The report's authors also say that technological solutions could help meet rising demand for meat and milk in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, without reversing the downward trend.
Climate change threatens to push endemic species in the Cerrado, Brazil's vast tropical savanna, into extinction while allowing the spread of species already commonplace elsewhere, a new study says.
