Three crucial threats to the Amazon Rainforest are: deforestation, climate change, and degradation due to human activities like mining and building roads. Human activity is both the cause and the effect of degradation as it allows access to more areas, leading to more deforestation and causing more climate change. As one of the most vital places for biodiversity on Earth, the Amazon is the lungs of the world. Destruction has impacts on every part of the planet, not just the forest.

The most dire of the three issues is deforestation. Forests that haven’t been cleared for mining and road building have been converted to use for cattle and crop farming, with soybeans being one of the most significant crops. The leading cause of deforestation across the world is agriculture, and the Amazon rainforest has suffered more loss than most. Currently, it is estimated almost one million square kilometers of forest across the Amazon have been destroyed in the last three decades, with most of the land being used for cattle pasture and soybean farming. The loss of forest causes habitat loss, and the release of stored carbon. As a result, the rainforest becomes more susceptible to other forms of degradation.

The second major problem is climate change. Amazon has an extremely sensitive environmental system of heat, moisture, and rainfall. Higher temperatures and altered weather patterns create forest drought specifically in the Amazon. When the forest is damaged, the drought makes it increasingly more likely to be in harms way from fires. And the more the forest gets damaged, the more moisture and recycled water it fails to contribute to the atmosphere. Deforestation and climate change are especially grassing a mutual relationship within the forest. IPCC has shown, with greater than 90% of certainty, that deforestation and rising wild fires are a net positive to climate change by releasing more greenhouse gases and restricting the Earth's ability to serve as a negative to climate change.

The third and final major problem of the Amazon is forest degradation, which is a problem of more of a hidden nature, as opposed to clear cutting, which everyone is familiar with but is arguably the way the forest is most harmed over an extended period. Logging, repeated natural fires, mining, divided by roads, etc. are the more subtle harbingers of forest degradation. Over the years the greater degradation of the forest, the more likely the forest gets re-harmed and damaged in the future. The degraded forest of the Amazon is creating more harm by being a positive factor to the forest damage, which is increasingly likely to outweigh the clear cutting of the forest.

These three issues are interrelated.  Climate change leads to deforestation, which makes dry conditions even worse.  Degrade leads to weakening forests.  Maintaining the Amazon slower the decline of the most important natural systems on the planet.