The deforestation rate in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has increased again and is at its second highest ever.

Such is the destruction that more than 26,000 square kilometres was lost last year - more than half the size of Switzerland.

Around 17 per cent of the natural vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon has already been devastated.

The WWF said the latest statistics show that the Brazilian government has not met its objectives set in 2003.

It criticised the government for promoting inconsistent policies, which encourage real estate speculation within forest areas to expand cattle ranching and industrial-scale farming which triggered problems of illegal land clearing, exploitation of workers, and criminal activities.

"Despite the efforts of the Ministry of Environment, the federal government and state authorities are not committed enough to the fight against deforestation," said Tessa Robertson, Head of the Forests Programme at WWF-UK.

"Governmental bodies and business corporations must do much more to reduce such a shocking deforestation rate, otherwise we run the real risk that a considerable part of the Brazilian forest will disappear before it has even been explored."

Although the Amazon Protected Areas Programme (ARPA), launched in 2002, set aside almost 16 million hectares of land for conservation and sustainable use, WWF said it believed that much more was needed to be done to save the rainforest.

"Creating protected areas is a truly effective conservation measure, but it is not a sufficient mechanism to stop deforestation," added Denise Hamu of the WWF. "We need to stop the rampant destruction of the forest and ensure that its resources benefit both people and nature."

But environment minister Marina Silva said measures had been put in place to tackle deforestation, such as forest patrols, increasing protected areas and supporting forest-based economic activities but she said the results would not come overnight.