Brazil's clear-cut deforestation rate led the world just five years ago. And between 1995 and 2006 an average of 19,497 square kilometers of forest was cleared in the Amazon annually, or an area equal to that covered by roughly 14,700 American football fields.

Starting in 2006, however, this trend reversed, and the figures started plummeting. Within four years the Brazilian government recorded a 60 percent drop in the nation's annual rate of deforestation; in 2010 it reached its lowest level since 1988. The 2010 figure--6,498 square kilometers--raised hopes that Brazil would fulfill the pledge in its 2009 National Law on Climate Change to reduce Amazon rainforest destruction 80 percent by 2020.