The voting of the Brazilian new Forest Code, vote is postponed to 2012. The new forest proposal was passed by the Senate last week, and was set to be voted on this week by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Brazil's National Congress. However, at the Chamber meeting, the vote that was meant to happen was postponed until March 2012, maybe to avoid to damage the green image of Brazil at the Rio+20 summit, a major environmental conference to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June.

The changes to the forest law will provide an amnesty for illegal deforestation which occurred before 2008, stop illegally deforested areas being fully restored and allow non-native species to be planted.

Brazilian government data shows that 79 million hectares of forest in Brazil - an area the size of the UK and France combined - could be left unprotected and 29 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide could be released into the atmosphere or not captured in restored forests as a result of the changes.