In Western Brazil, including Amazonian regions, average temperatures have risen at twice the global rate, driving droughts and widespread wildfires in recent years. The 2025 Ecological Threat Report (ETR) found this contributed to South America recording the second greatest regional deterioration in overall ETR scores since 2019. Rising exposure to natural events, water scarcity, and food insecurity accounted for much of this decline.
Brazil, the region’s largest country by land area and population, saw significant declines across both the impact of natural events and food security indicators. Between 2019 and 2024, Brazil’s Central-West region recorded one of the steepest deteriorations in global ETR scores. The region encompasses the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Goiás, with Mato Grosso registering the second-largest increase in ecological threat of any subnational area worldwide – surpassed only by Manouba, Tunisia.
The impact of natural events remains Brazil’s most severe ecological threat, with the Amazonian states of Pará and Amazonas recording the highest threat levels nationally. The wider Amazon basin has become increasingly vulnerable to prolonged droughts and large-scale wildfires, with 2023 and 2024 marking the hottest years on record. In 2024 alone, an estimated 44.2 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon burned – representing a 66 per cent increase from the previous year. However, the most pronounced deteriorations in this indicator were concentrated in the Central-West region, which encompasses three interconnected ecosystems: the Cerrado savannah, the Pantanal wetlands, and the southern reaches of the Amazon rainforest.
The Mato Grosso state recorded the largest deterioration in impact of natural events nationwide. In 2024, the state experienced an exceptionally severe wildfire season, with nearly 3,900 hotspots detected in the Pantanal biome during the first half of the year – more than 16 times the number observed in the same period of 2023. These fires burned over 7,200 square kilometres in Mato Grosso and neighbouring Mato Grosso do Sul, the worst conditions ever recorded in the region for the first half of the year. While global average temperatures have exceeded 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, temperatures in the Pantanal have risen by 3-4°C in recent decades, greatly intensifying fire risk.
These ecological disasters have also posed significant challenges to national food production, disrupting agricultural output and exacerbating existing pressures on food security. Since 2019, Brazil has recorded the tenth largest deterioration in food security globally, and the second highest in South America (after Colombia). Food security worsened across all Brazilian states, with the sharpest declines again observed in Mato Grosso.
Despite poverty rates in Brazil remaining close to 25 per cent, moderate to severe food insecurity has drastically increased from 20.5 per cent in 2020 to 28.4 per cent just two years later. This pressure on food sources has been exacerbated by a 37.5 per cent rise in national food prices compared with pre-pandemic levels. Conditions are even more severe in rural states, like Mato Grosso, where food insecurity is 1.2 times higher than in urban centres.
South America recorded the greatest regional deterioration in water risk between 2019 and 2024, though only Brazil and Venezuela achieved marginal improvements at the national level. Within Brazil, these modest gains masked sharp subnational disparities: several Amazonian states saw drastically worsening conditions, particularly Rondônia, which recorded the highest deterioration in water risk nationally and was the only state classified as very high risk. In Rondônia, the escalation of water scarcity has been compounded by decades of deforestation for cattle ranching and agriculture, as well as by a destructive wildfire season in late 2024.
Mato Grosso recorded the second largest deterioration in water risk nationwide, driven by an extended drought between 2019 and 2022 and by policy changes that lifted restrictions on soybean expansion and weakened forest protections. As Brazil’s leading soybean producer, Mato Grosso’s expanding agricultural water demand has placed mounting pressure on the region’s limited freshwater resources, reinforcing the interplay between environmental degradation, economic development, and ecological vulnerability.
— Download the Ecological Threat Report Press Release
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— View the Ecological Threat Report Interactive Map
— Further reading: Extreme Wet-Dry Seasons Emerge as Critical Conflict Catalyst
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Analysing ecological threats, resilience & peace.
Analysing ecological threats, resilience & peace.
