Deforestation in Brazil in the Bolsonaro years not only grew in area, compared to the four years prior to his government, but also reached places that had previously been deforested little or not at all. It extended the frontier of agricultural expansion beyond the arc of deforestation and penetrated deeper into the forest, exploded in cities in the cerrado in a few years and reached more than half of the municipalities across the country.
This is what some analyzes released recently reveal and which help to qualify —in addition to quantifying— how deforestation behaved during this period. The first conclusion is that he became more spread out in the territory, bolder and faster.
Considering only the first three years of government, there was an increase in the number of municipalities with deforestation alerts. They were 1,734 (31.1%) in 2019 and jumped to 2,889 (51.9%) in 2021, according to an analysis by the MapBiomas Alerta project in its Annual Report on Deforestation, released in mid-July. From 2019 to 2021, the report points out, 61.2% of Brazilian municipalities had at least one deforestation detected.
The average area of ​​each deforestation grew, which indicates greater boldness in actions. More frequent, for example, were large deforestations — with more than one hundred hectares (about ten soccer fields). There was a 43.5% increase in the number of these alerts between 2019 and 2021. They represented 44.2% of the total deforested in the country in 2019, increased to 46.6% in 2020 and to 51.7% in 2021.
In addition, the speed of deforestation has also increased. It went from, on average, 139 hectares per hour in 2019 to 189 ha/h in 2021.
“The number of municipalities with deforestation has increased, the average area of ​​each deforestation has increased and the speed of each deforestation has increased. If the speed increases and the area increases, there is a sign that there is ongoing impunity”, comments forestry engineer Tasso Azevedo , coordinator of MapBiomas. In fact, according to the group’s analyses, there are signs of illegality in more than 98% of the deforested area in the period.
But perhaps what most calls attention in this period is that deforestation expanded into areas where until then it was not such a serious problem. In 2021, for the first time, the state of Amazonas became the second most deforested in the Legal Amazon, surpassing Rondônia and Mato Grosso, behind only Pará, according to the Prodes system, from Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), which brings official data on deforestation in the Amazon.
In general, in recent years, Amazonas has always occupied the fourth position. This reversal will likely continue into 2022 — a trend that appears in the various monitoring systems in the region.
Another Inpe monitoring system, Deter, which provides alerts in practically real time to guide inspections, already points to this. The consolidated number of alerts recorded from August last year to July this year, concluded on Friday (12), showed that Amazonas was once again in second place, accounting for an even greater share of deforestation.
According to Deter, Amazonas accounted for almost 27% (2,292 kmtwo) of the total deforested in the last 12 months (8,590 kmtwo) in the region. Pará, in first place, had almost 36% (3,072 kmtwo) of the alerts. In the previous 12 months (from August 2020 to July 2021), this proportion, also by Deter, had been 19.6% and 39.8%, respectively.
These data are yet to be confirmed by Prodes, which is a more accurate system that provides official figures for annual deforestation in the Amazon, but indicates the trend of what is happening in the region.
In the Deter consolidated over the last 12 months, two cities in the south of the Amazon were in the first positions as the most deforested in the Legal Amazon. Lábrea, in first place, had 571 kmtwo deforested, and ApuÃ, in second, 566 kmtwo. The two cities together accounted for 13% of the region’s total clearcut alerts.
This worries specialists because the Amazon still has large areas of preserved forest. And because the advance is part of two high-pressure contexts: the discussion around the creation of a new agribusiness pole, with support from the federal government, to expand the agricultural frontier in the region that was named Amacro (because it is composed of parts of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia); and the paving of the BR-319, which connects Manaus to Porto Velho.
“Amacro has become a new driver of deforestation in the Amazon, and the progress we have seen since last year is 100% linked to the expectation of paving the BR-319, what will happen there, and the occupation of the area, with the creation of a new agribusiness hub. Lábrea, ApuÃ, Humaitá [as três no Amazonas] and Porto Velho are all municipalities that are part of this region and are receiving pressure”, explains Azevedo.
“The south of Amazonas was never part of the deforestation arc. Until a few years ago, the arc stopped there. In part because of the protection of a set of conservation units in Amazonas, on the border with Mato Grosso. this barrier of protection and is opening a new vein that goes to the heart of the Amazon.”
The MapBiomas analysis released in July indicates a 29% jump in deforestation at Amacro from 2020 to 2021. Last year, the region concentrated 12.2% of the total deforested in the country and 20.8% of what was cut down in the Amazon.
The BR-319 was opened in the 1970s, paved, but due to lack of maintenance, the asphalt succumbed and to this day the road, which is the only overland exit from Manaus to the rest of the country, is difficult to access.
The lack of infrastructure ended up protecting the area, the largest block of intact vegetation in the entire Amazon. The opposite, however, is also true. Several studies estimate that asphalting can result in a high rate of deforestation.
At the end of July, Ibama granted a prior license for the work, contradicting previous opinions from the agency itself, which warned of the need for a series of preconditions.
“What the literature shows is that, when there is infrastructure such as a road, there is an expectation of land appreciation, so it is kind of automatic to have deforestation already thinking about future profit. But this increase in Amazonas that we saw last year scared me, as it was It’s a surprise to see that again in this cycle now”, says Claudio Almeida, head of the department at Inpe that coordinates deforestation monitoring.
“The front is expanding. There was a set of municipalities that dominated deforestation and now new areas are appearing in this process.”
Another region where this behavior was evident in the Bolsonaro years is Matopiba (area that encompasses parts of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauà and Bahia), in the cerrado. The biome, the second in area deforested annually, is also on the frontier of agricultural expansion.
Since 2019, some cities in the region have come out of minimum rates and have seen a few-hundred-fold increase in deforestation. One of the cases that draws attention is that of Aldeias Altas (MA), a municipality with only 25,000 inhabitants that passed less than 2 kmtwo deforested from August 2018 to July 2019 for almost 72 kmtwo from August 2021 to July 2022, up 3,714%, according to Deter.
The champion cities for deforestation in the cerrado in the last year —Formosa do Rio Preto (BA), São Desidério (BA) and Balsas (MA) — all had significant increases since 2019.
“The deforestation frontier in Matopiba is expanding almost radially. As it is connected from many places, it becomes easier. The gates have been opened for new enterprises that find themselves without any type of supervision”, explains researcher Ane Alencar, of Ipam (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), which coordinates the monitoring of the cerrado for MapBiomas.
“Environmental dismantling, changes in legislation, the weakening of control bodies are having an important impact on defining the frontiers of agricultural expansion”, he says.
The initiative’s annual deforestation report revealed that Matopiba concentrated 23.6% of the total deforested in the country in 2021 and 72.5% of what was lost in the cerrado. Compared to 2020, there was a 14% increase in deforestation in this region.
The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.
