Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest the forest is still shrinking.<ref name="INPE/Prods satellite data"> INPE figures August to July.</ref> Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg announced on September 16, 2008, that Norway's government would donate US $1 billion to the newly established Amazon fund. The money from this fund would go to projects aimed at slowing down the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. In September 2015, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff told the United Nations that Brazil had effectively reduced the rate of deforestation in the Amazon by 82 percent. She also announced that over the next 15 years, Brazil aimed to eliminate illegal deforestation, restore and reforest
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest In the pre-Columbian era, parts of the Amazon Rainforest were a densely populated open agriculture. After the European colonization in the 16th century, with the hunt for gold, Western diseases, slavery and later the rubber boom, the Amazon Rainforest was depopulated and the forest grew larger. Prior to 1974s, access to the forest's largely roadless interior was difficult, and aside from partial clearing along rivers the forest remained intact. Deforestation accelerated greatly following the opening of highways deep into the forest, such as the Trans-Amazonian highway in 1972. In parts of the Amazon, the poor soil made plantation-based agriculture unprofitable.