Technical brief: Drivers of Amazon deforestation in agricultural supply chains

Report, 2025

This technical brief provides a region-wide analysis of the commodity-specific agricultural drivers of deforestation across the Amazon region at a sub-national level, and their connections to domestic and international trade-linked consumption. It offers insights to inform more effective and equitable conservation strategies, particularly regarding the potential to influence commodity supply chains that contribute to forest loss. We integrate sub-national agricultural commodity production statistics with satellite data on land use for each country within the Amazon region. We link this information to a downscaled hybridised multi-regional input-output model to allocate production activities to demand drivers, either within domestic markets or – via trade – to regional and international points of consumption. Since agricultural deforestation and its associated climate impacts pose an imminent threat to the Amazon region, enhancing the granular understanding of commodity-specific deforestation and its associated connection to domestic and international markets can empower (sub-)regional, national and international actors and policy makers to identify risk hotspots and trends in deforestation exposure and target place-based interventions to support sustainable land use and forest conservation across the Amazon region.