The area lost 360 km2 of forest in the first three weeks of the year, which is the worst toll since satellite observations began in 2015.
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It’s a sad performance for a month of January. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached nearly 360 km2 in the first three weeks of the year, according to official data released on Wednesday February 2. The data available on the website of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) stops at January 21, but the deforested area is already the largest since this information collected by satellites is broadcast in 2015.
By way of comparison, deforestation in the Amazon had spread over 83 km2 for the whole month of January 2021, four times less than in the first 21 days of this year. “To have such a high figure in January, at the height of the rainy season, when deforestation is usually less severe, is extremely concerning.”estimated Claudio Angelo, member of the NGO collective Observatoire du Climat. “We have to wait for the next few months to see what the trend will be for this year, but it’s already a very bad sign”he added.
In November, the INPE had already announced that deforestation in the largest tropical forest in the world had extended over 13,235 km2 over the reference period from August 2020 to July 2021, unheard of in 15 years.
It was the third consecutive increase over this period since the rise to power of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who is the target of international criticism for having weakened the monitoring of the Amazon ecosystem and encouraged mining activities or agriculture in protected areas. The Climate Observatory revealed on Tuesday that Ibama, the main environmental monitoring body, had spent only 41% of the budget allocated to controls in 2021.