page_title: Ethanol fuel in Brazil
section_title: Deforestation
hierarchical_section_title: Ethanol fuel in Brazil / Environmental and social impacts / Environmental effects / Issues / Deforestation
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Brazil showing regions where sugarcane is grown together with the main environmentally sensitive areas: Amazon forest, Pantanal wetlands, and Atlantic rainforest. This is Figure 1 from the paper indicated above.
context_page_description: Brazil is the world's second largest producer of ethanol fuel. Brazil and the United States have led the industrial production of ethanol fuel for several years, together accounting for 85 percent of the world's production in 2017. Brazil produced 26.72 billion liters, representing 26.1 percent of the world's total ethanol used as fuel in 2017.
  Between 2006–2008, Brazil was considered to have the world's first "sustainable" biofuels economy and the biofuel industry leader, a policy model for other countries; and its sugarcane ethanol "the most successful alternative fuel to date." However, some authors consider that the successful Brazilian ethanol model is sustainable only in Brazil due to its advanced agri-industrial technology and its enormous amount of arable land available; while according to other authors it is a solution only for some countries in the tropical zone of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.
  In recent years however, later-generation biofuels have sprung up which don't use food crops that are explicitly grown for fuel production.
context_section_description: Other criticism have focused on the potential for clearing rain forests and other environmentally valuable land for sugarcane production, such as the Amazon, the Pantanal or the Cerrado. Embrapa and UNICA have rebutted this concern explaining that 99.7% of sugarcane plantations are located at least 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) from the Amazonia, and expansion during the last 25 years took place in the Center-South region, also far away from the Amazonia, the Pantanal or the Atlantic forest. In São Paulo state growth took place in abandoned pasture lands.
  The impact assessment regarding future changes in land use, forest protection and risks on biodiversity conducted as part of the study commissioned by the Dutch government concluded that "the direct impact of cane production on biodiversity is limited, because cane production replaces mainly pastures and/or food crop and sugar cane production takes place far from the major biomes in Brazil (Amazon Rain Forest, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Campos Sulinos and Pantanal)." However, "...the indirect impacts from an increase of the area under sugar cane production are likely more severe. The most important indirect impact would be an expansion of the area agricultural land at the expense of cerrados. The cerrados are an important biodiversity reserve. These indirect impacts are difficult to quantify and there is a lack of practically applicable criteria and indicators."
  In order to guarantee a sustainable development of ethanol production, in September 2009 the government issued by decree a countrywide agroecological land use zoning to restrict sugarcane growth in or near environmentally sensitive areas such as the Pantanal wetlands, the Amazon Rainforest and the Upper Paraguay River Basin. The installation of new ethanol production plants will not be permitted on these locations, and only existing plants and new ones with environmental licensed already approved before September 17, 2009, will be allowed to remain operating in these sensitive areas. According to the new criteria, 92.5% of the Brazilian territory is not suitable for sugarcane plantation. The government considers that the suitable areas are more than enough to meet the future demand for ethanol and sugar in the domestic and international markets foreseen for the next decades.
caption: Location of environmentally valuable areas with respect to sugarcane plantations. São Paulo, located in the Southeast Region of Brazil, concentrates two-thirds of sugarcane cultures.[85]
exif: {"Image XPTitle": "[83, 0, 117, 0, 103, 0, 97, 0, 114, 0, 99, 0, 97, 0, 110, 0, 101, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image XPComment": "[169, 0, 32, 0, 50, 0, 48, 0, 48, 0, 56, 0, 32, 0, 71, 0, 111, 0, 108, 0, ... ]", "Image XPAuthor": "Jos\u00e9 Goldemberg in Biotechnology for Biofuels 2008, 1:6doi:10.1186/1754-6834-1-6", "Image XPSubject": "[84, 0, 104, 0, 101, 0, 32, 0, 66, 0, 114, 0, 97, 0, 122, 0, 105, 0, 108, 0, ... ]"}