The Jair Bolsonaro government not only held back the disclosure of the record of deforestation in the Amazon in 15 years, detected by INPE (National Institute for Space Research), but also took to COP26 a 5% drop in devastation in the biome, recorded in a document official of the MMA (Ministry of the Environment).
On the 1st, the first business day of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, in Glasgow, UK, the MMA announced a plan to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon in 2028, a two-year advance in relation to the previous target.
The announcement was made by minister Joaquim Álvaro Pereira Leite, in a virtual message broadcast at the Brazilian government’s stand in Glasgow.
The MMA then presented the guidelines for climate neutrality in Brazil, whose main annex is the National Plan for the Control of Illegal Deforestation and the Recovery of Native Vegetation 2020-2023. The creation date of the document is also the 1st.
The plan defines how the Bolsonaro government intends to reduce deforestation in the Amazon, until it zeroes in 2028. A graph shows data from Inpe’s Prodes (Deforestation Monitoring Project in the Legal Amazon by Satellite), with unrealistic data on deforestation in 2021.
The graph projects deforestation of 10,308 km² in 2021 and associates it with Prodes. It would be a 5% reduction compared to 2020, when satellites showed a destruction of 10,851 km².
The number is wrong. On the last 18th, Inpe released the deforestation report measured by Prodes, with an area of 13,235 km² between July 2020 and August 2021, an increase of 22% compared to the previous period. It is the highest value ever recorded since 2006.
The INPE document was ready on October 27th. On the same day, the agency entered the report in the federal government’s electronic system.
The data remained hidden on the eve of COP26, during the UN summit and almost a week after the event ended.
The Amazon deforestation record in 15 years was only made public on the last 18th.
The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation does not explain why the data remained hidden. In a statement, the folder stated that the disclosure of Prodes takes place annually in December.
“The release of data for the period from August 1, 2020 to July 31, 2021, made on 11/18, took place before the deadline,” he said.
Over the years, Prodes data has already been released in October, November and December.
The minister of the Environment stated that he only had access to Prodes data on the day they became public, with the publication of the report on the Inpe website.
The ministry did not respond to the article’s questions about the incorrect data included in the National Plan for the Control of Illegal Deforestation, presented at the beginning of COP26.
A 5% reduction in deforestation is the same considered by the National Council for the Legal Amazon, chaired by Vice President Hamilton Mourão.
At the penultimate council meeting of the year, on August 24, Mourão stated that Prodes would show a 5% drop in deforestation.
Representatives of five ministries also cited a drop in devastation and associated policies by the departments — such as regularization of illegal mining, military intervention in the biome, land regularization, logging and extractivism — with an improvement in indicators that did not occur, such as sheet showed on Sunday (28).
The unrealistic data, placed in the MMA plan, can have chain consequences in the scaling of deforestation reduction foreseen in the plan itself.
The idea is to reduce vegetation loss by 15% a year, between 2022 and 2024. Then, between 2025 and 2026, the annual reduction would be 40%. In 2027, 50%. And, finally, in 2028, zero deforestation.
The projected figure for 2022, the last in Bolsonaro’s current term, is 8,762 km², which represents a 15% decrease in relation to the unrealistic figure for 2021 —10,308 km²— placed in the document.
As Inpe’s satellites showed a significant increase in deforestation in 2021, the year used as the basis for scaling reductions, the drop in devastation will have to be even more significant for Brazil to be able to fulfill its promise of zeroing deforestation in 2028.
“Inspection and combat actions, traditionally, usually present immediate results for the control and reduction of illegal deforestation, mainly in the Amazon”, states the plan drawn up by the MMA.
“Direct actions to repress illegal deforestation and forest fires constitute the first step to combat the felling of native vegetation and, consequently, other associated crimes, such as land grabbing, illegal logging, invasion of public areas, among others “, quotes the document.
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