ABSTRACT
Brazil is widely hailed as a key national player in the pursuit of global biodiversity conservation objectives, if only because such a significant proportion of remaining terrestrial and marine tropical biodiversity lies within its borders (Figure 15.1). The Amazon is the world’s largest contiguous tropical forest, covering over half of the Brazilian territory. Over 80 per cent of the original tropical broadleaved forest remains in Brazilian Amazonia (INPE 2013). Approximately 21.7 per cent of the Legal Amazon 1 region lies in indigenous lands and an additional 22.2 per cent in protected areas, mostly (14%) in areas designated for the sustainable use of biodiversity (Pereira et al. 2010).
