Between July 2020 and August 2021, Brazil deforested more than 13,235 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest. It is a record that takes the country back to the early 2000s, its worst period for the destruction of the Amazon. To give an order of magnitude, in one year, Brazil deforested an area of virgin forest equivalent to the size of Lebanon.
It is estimated that each hectare of Amazon rainforest contains nearly 600 trees, which translates to 60,000 trees per square kilometer. Nearly 2.8 million trees were therefore cut every day, 32 trees per second, or in other words 800 million trees fell in one year. In addition, as scientists consider that for three hectares deforested, another hectare is degraded to make a road or by fire which is often used by loggers, it is a billion trees that would have been cut in a year.
These figures were known four days before the 26th COP but the government was careful not to disclose them, as the NGOs denounced. Brazil was therefore able, without attracting too much international attention, to commit to stopping deforestation in 2030 and to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, or to sign the forest declaration.
The country is particularly committed on paper, while doing exactly the opposite on the ground. Brazil continues today to dismantle the instruments of control and repression of deforestation, in particular the environmental police, and it destroys scientific research programs or aid allocated to NGOs.
Until now, the international community has been powerless in the face of this observation, but sanctions are now on the table. On November 17, the European Commission proposed to ban imports of soybeans and meat from deforested areas.
The United States is considering the same type of sanction. It is indeed possible to trace the origin of these products and therefore to ban them. Brazilian NGOs have been calling for this type of measure for a long time, but they are now asking to go even further, not only in sanctions but by offering financial aid to those who conserve the forest.