Alvaro Masquez Salvador, a lawyer, said: "For us, this is very worrying."

Masquez said the change is bad because it makes land private that belongs to the country. He said, "Forests are not private - they belong to the country."

People who support the new law, which started in March, say it will help farming in Peru and give farmers clearer legal rights.

The Associated Press asked many people in Peru's farming business and a politician, Maria Zeta Chunga, for their ideas about the law. She really liked the law. Only one person from the farming business answered, and they said they did not want to talk about it.

Peru has the second-biggest part of the Amazon rainforest after Brazil. This area is more than 70 million hectares, which is about 60% of Peru. This area has many different kinds of plants and animals. More than 50 groups of Indigenous people live there, and some live alone away from others. These people are important because they help protect the rainforest. The rainforest is also important because it helps the Earth's climate by taking in carbon dioxide, which is a gas that causes climate change.

A law from 2011 said that if you wanted to change how you used forest land, you needed to get permission from the government and study the environment. But recent changes to this law have made these rules less strong. The newest change means that people and companies don't need to get this permission anymore, and it even makes deforestation that happened before legal.

In Peru, the court said a new rule was okay after some lawyers said it was not right. The court changed some parts of the rule, but it kept the last part. This part says that changes to how land was used before are now okay, even if they were not allowed then. People who study laws say this is the most dangerous part.

The court said that local people should have been asked about changes to the law. They also agreed that the Environment Ministry should decide where forests are.

Environmental lawyer César Ipenza said this: "The court agrees the law was bad for the rights of the local people and that the tribes should have been asked. But it still says the worst part is okay."

This change is similar to what happened in Brazil when Jair Bolsonaro was president. In Brazil, politicians and businesses worked together to make environmental rules less strict so that farms could grow more. In Brazil, large farming companies were very organized and powerful. In Peru, the group that wants to make the rules less strict is not as organized, but they are still powerful.

In Peru, people who work in farming businesses, people who take land illegally, and people connected to illegal mining and drugs support this. Also, small and medium farmers who are worried about keeping their land have joined in.

Vladimir Pinto works for a group that helps the environment. He said that companies that obey the law and companies that break the law are starting to join together.

Julia Urrunaga from Environmental Investigation Agency said the government in Peru is saying the changes are needed because of new rules from the European Union. These rules will soon make companies show that products like soy, beef, and palm oil do not come from land where trees were cut down illegally.

She said that if products from illegal tree cutting are allowed to be sold later, rules like the EU's will not work as well.

This is not good for markets around the world and makes it harder to stop cutting down trees by controlling what we buy and sell, Urrunaga said.

Olivier Coupleux, who works for the EU in Peru, said that recent changes to the law are not related to the EU's rule about protecting forests.

Coupleux spoke to the media in Peru. He said the new rule wants to stop people from buying things that cause forests to be cut down. He also said they do not need new laws. Companies just need to show where products like coffee, cocoa, and wood come from and that they are made in a way that helps the environment.

Because they cannot do more in their own country's courts, groups of citizens are planning to go to international courts. They say the decision is a bad example for other countries that want to ignore environmental laws by calling it "reform."

Many Indigenous leaders think the law is a danger to their land, communities, and how they live.

Julio Cusurichi said the new rule will make it easier for people to take land and will cause more environmental problems in areas that are already weak.

Our people have always protected our land and the Earth, Cusurichi said.