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There are 670,000,000 hectares (1.7×109 acres) of Amazon rainforest, 60 percent lying within Brazil. From a global climate perspective, the Amazon has been the world's largest carbon dioxide sink, and estimated to capture up to 25% of global carbon dioxide generation into plants and other biomass. Without this sink, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would increase and contribute towards higher global temperatures, thus making the viability of the Amazon a global concern. The flora also generates significant quantities of water vapor through transpiration which travel large distances to other parts of South America and contribute to the precipitation in these areas. Due to ongoing global climate change, environmental scientists have raised concerns that the Amazon could irreversibly die out, the land becoming more savanna than forest, under certain climate change conditions which are exacerbated by anthropogenic activities. Due to the increase in fires in the Amazon, already in 2012 Brazil started to use fire-fighting airplanes. By 2014, USAID was teaching the indigenous people how to fight fires. Agricultural fires in southern Pará, Brazil in August 2019. Brazil's role in deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has been a significant issue since the 1970s. Since the 1970s, Brazil has consumed approximately 12 percent of the forest, representing roughly 77,700,000 hectares (192,000,000 acres)â€"an area larger than that of the US state of Texas. Most of the deforestation has been for natural resources for the logging industry, and land clearing for agricultural and mining use. According to the World Bank, some 80% of deforested land is used for cattle ranching. It is a common practice in the Amazon for farmers to set fires illegally using slash-and-burn to deforest land for ranching and farming during the dry season. This is partially driven by growing demand for beef exports from Brazil, particularly to China and Hong Kong; Brazil is one of the largest exporters of beef, accounting for more than 20% of global trade of the commodity. Brazil's cattle herd has increased by 56% over the last two decades. Ranchers wait until the dry season to slash-and-burn to give time for the cattle to graze. While slash-and-burn can be controlled, unskilled farmers may end up causing wildfires. According to Euronews, wildfires have increased as the agricultural sector has "pushed into the Amazon basin and spurred deforestation". In recent years, "land-grabbers" (grileiros) have been illegally cutting deep into the forest in "Brazil's Indigenous territories and other protected forests throughout the Amazon". In the past, Brazil had taken a more proactive approach to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. In 2004, the Brazilian government had established the Federal Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAM), with the goal to reduce the rate of deforestation through land use regulation, environmental monitoring, and sustainable activities, promoted through partnerships at the federal and private level, and legal penalties for violations. As a result of enforcement of PPCDAM, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped 83.5% of their 2004 rates by 2012