Brazil's Amazon rainforest has shrunk by an area as big as Spain over four decades and is nearing a dangerous tipping point, according to monitoring data released Monday.

The Amazon was approaching a "point of no return" of 20 to 25 percent vegetation loss at which it "ceases to sustain itself as a rainforest," said Bruno Ferreira, a researcher at the MapBiomas monitoring platform.

"When too much vegetation is lost, the rain cycle is disrupted, and large areas tend to transform into drier savannas."

Brazil, which will host the UN COP30 climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belem in November, is home to 60 percent of the rainforest which spans nine countries.

Satellite images studied by MapBiomas showed the loss of 49.1 million hectares (121 million acres) of rainforest between 19

See Full Page