Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has slowed by nearly half compared to last year, according to government satellite data released Wednesday. It’s the biggest reduction since 2016, when authorities began using the current measurement method.
In the last twelve months, the Amazon rainforest has lost 4,300 km2an area roughly equivalent to that of the greater Montreal area. This represents a decrease of almost 46% compared to the previous period. The periods studied extend from 1er August to July 30.
Much remains to be done to halt the destruction, and there was still a 33% increase in tree cutting in July compared to July 2023. A strike by federal environmental agency workers contributed to the increase, João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of the Environment Ministry, said at a press conference in Brasília.
The figures presented Wednesday are preliminary and come from the Deter satellite system, managed by the National Institute for Space Research and used by environmental law enforcement agencies to detect deforestation in real time. The most accurate calculations on deforestation are usually published in November.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to achieve zero deforestation by 2030. His current term ends in January 2027. Deforestation in the Amazon has declined sharply since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro left office in 2022. Under Bolsonaro, forest loss reached its highest level in 15 years.
About two-thirds of the Amazon is in Brazil. It remains the largest rainforest in the world, covering an area twice the size of India. The Amazon absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), which prevents the climate from warming even faster. It also contains about 20% of the planet’s fresh water and a biodiversity that scientists have not yet even managed to measure, including at least 16,000 species of trees.
Over the past year, deforestation in Brazil’s vast savannah known as the Cerrado has increased by 9%. The loss of native vegetation has reached 7,015 km2 — an area 63% larger than the destruction in the Amazon.
A savannah “sacrificed” to agriculture
The Cerrado is the most biodiverse savannah in the world, but it is less protected than the rainforest to the north. Brazil’s soy boom, the country’s second largest export, comes largely from private land in the Cerrado.
The Cerrado has become a “sacrifice biome. Its topography lends itself to large-scale mechanized production of raw materials,” Isabel Figueiredo, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Society, Population and Nature Institute, told The Associated Press.
Brazilians and the international community are more concerned about forests than savannahs and open landscapes, she added, even though these ecosystems are also extremely rich in biodiversity and essential to the balance of the climate.
To control deforestation in the long term, monitoring, such as by satellite, and law enforcement are not enough, Paulo Barreto, a researcher at the Amazon Institute of Man and the Environment, a nonprofit organization, warned by email.
New protected areas are needed, both inside and outside indigenous territories, as well as greater transparency so that slaughterhouses know where their livestock comes from, he says. Cattle ranching is the main driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Degraded pastures also need to be replanted and turned back into forest, Barreto says, and the financial sector needs to be subject to stricter rules to prevent financing deforestation.
Interviewed in Brasilia, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, conceded that, so far, law enforcement has been the main tool to combat deforestation, but that the government’s action must and will be broader. “From now on, we must combine continued law enforcement with support for sustainable productive activities, which is one of the pillars of our plan,” she said.