The world's tropical rainforests are approaching a breaking point, according to a new report commissioned by Rainforest Foundation Norway and produced by Dutch research organization Profundo. The study, published on May 20, identifies a compounding assault on the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and the forests of Southeast Asia — one driven not only by long-established threats such as cattle ranching, oil drilling, and monoculture agriculture, but increasingly by a new wave of extraction tied to critical minerals, biofuels, and industrial pulp. These newer pressures, the report concludes, are weakening forests' ability to regulate temperature, store carbon, recycle water, and support wildlife — functions that underpin climate stability far beyond the forest edge.
"It creates a pressure that the rainforests cannot withstand," said Ingrid Turgen of Rainforest Foundation Norway. The study calls on governments and industry to urgently replace and reduce consumption of forest-derived products, and frames the extractive threats from energy, mining, and e-commerce as elements of a single compounded crisis rather than separate problems to be managed in isolation.
Cattle, Gold, and the Expanding Agricultural Frontier
The report identifies cattle ranching, large-scale agriculture, and gold mining as the three most significant current threats to tropical forests — and all three are expected to continue expanding. The Brazilian government's own forecast of a 10.2 percent increase in beef production is likely to cause at least 57,000 square kilometers of additional deforestation by 2034, the study found. That projection could climb higher still if the trend of shifting ranching operations deeper into the Amazon continues. Global meat production overall is expected to rise by 13 percent over the same period, driven by population growth and rising incomes in developing markets.
Gold mining is also carving into the Amazon at a pace that tracks commodity prices more than policy. Open-pit goldmines already cover 1.9 million hectares of the Amazon biome. The report identifies a clear correlation between gold price increases and deforestation linked to mining activity in the Brazilian Amazon, and projects that current demand trends will cause an additional 375 square kilometers of forest loss by 2028 from this source alone. Nearly three-quarters of gold demand comes from jewelry (43 percent) and investor holdings, with technology contributing a further 7 percent — meaning the market signals encouraging more mining are embedded in everyday consumer behavior.
The Clean Energy Paradox: Critical Minerals and Fossil Fuel Frontiers
Among the report's more pointed findings is a paradox at the heart of the global energy transition. Mining for critical minerals — lithium, nickel, and cobalt, which are essential components of electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy infrastructure — is adding new stress to forest ecosystems at precisely the moment the world is attempting to move away from fossil fuels. The environmental impact of these operations is larger than commonly understood, the report argues, due to secondary effects including water pollution from mine tailings, road construction that opens previously inaccessible forest interiors to further exploitation, and the displacement of communities that previously acted as de facto forest stewards.
Meanwhile, fossil fuel extraction itself is expanding into the Amazon at an accelerating rate. The study notes that the Amazon has become one of the world's fastest-growing fossil fuel frontiers, with active exploration and extraction in Brazil, Suriname, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. Nearly one-fifth of all oil and natural gas reserves discovered globally between 2022 and 2024 were located in South American rainforest or offshore areas. In the Congo Basin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo last year approved the exploration of 52 new oil blocks covering 1.24 million square kilometers in the Cuvette Centrale peatlands — the world's largest terrestrial carbon sink.
WRI Data: Loss Down from Record, But Still Alarmingly High
The Rainforest Foundation Norway report lands against a backdrop of cautious and contested progress documented in Global Forest Watch's annual analysis, released by the World Resources Institute on April 29. The WRI found that tropical primary rainforest loss dropped 36 percent in 2025 compared to the record high set in 2024 — a decline driven largely by policy enforcement in Brazil. The world still lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest in 2025, an area roughly the size of Denmark. Despite the year-on-year improvement, that figure remains 46 percent higher than the rate recorded a decade ago, with primary forests disappearing at approximately 11 soccer fields per minute.
Bolivia recorded the second-highest amount of tropical primary forest loss in the world in 2025, despite holding 60 percent less primary forest than the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fire — mostly set by humans to clear land for agriculture — was the main driver in Bolivia, alongside the expansion of cattle ranching and soy and maize cultivation.In the DRC, although total forest loss dipped slightly in 2025, non-fire loss hit a record high, linked to small-scale farming, charcoal production, conflict-driven displacement, and intensifying pressure from mining.There's progress in parts of the Congo Basin, but in others deforestation remains alarmingly high, said Teodyl Nkuintchua, Congo Basin Strategy and Engagement Lead at WRI Africa.
Southeast Asia: Stable for Now, But Under Pressure
Indonesia and Malaysia posted stable and relatively low forest loss rates in 2025 compared to the peaks of the mid-2010s. Indonesia's performance was attributed in part to policies restricting new forest clearing and expanding community forest rights.However, analysts cautioned that Jakarta's ambitions for large-scale food and energy self-sufficiency involving expanded palm oil and biofuel production risk reversing those gains. The WRI noted that 2026 will put Southeast Asia's recent progress to a severe test, with El Niño conditions expected to increase fire risk and national elections in several forest-heavy countries set to determine whether conservation policies hold.
