It has been almost a year since the environment minister, Joaquim Leite, signed the Declaration on Forests in Glasgow, committing Brazil to zero illegal deforestation by 2028. However, the loss of vegetation has continued to increase since COP26 (26th UN Conference on Climate Change), held in Scotland between October and November 2021.
Only the first half of 2022 recorded the largest area under deforestation alert in seven years of measurement in the Legal Amazon, according to Inpe (National Institute for Space Research).
For experts, if the current trend continues, there is no prediction that the target for 2028 will be met.
“What has been happening in the last eight years is an increase, not a decrease in deforestation”, says Cláudio Almeida, coordinator of the program to monitor the Amazon and other biomes at Inpe. “It is necessary to reverse the curve before thinking about going down. If nothing changes, we will not reach this goal.”
Since 2018, the Amazon region has been experiencing consecutive increases in deforestation. In the last three years of the Bolsonaro government (PL), the average deforestation was 75% higher than the average of the previous ten years (2009-2018).
“From 2012 onwards, deforestation starts to fluctuate,” says Stela Herschmann, a climate policy expert at the Climate Observatory. “We see an increase, but it is inconsistent. It is in 2018 that there is a leap. From that moment on, you reach another level that has not been seen for over a decade.”
For Herschmann, what exists is a government project that has remained unchanged, regardless of public commitments. “In less than five years we have reversed the progress we had made in more than a decade of work. This will not be easy to rescue.”
Sought, the Ministry of the Environment did not specifically comment on the target for 2028. In a statement, the ministry states that “the federal government has acted extremely forcefully in protecting the environment and fighting environmental crimes.” “In the entire Legal Amazon, the reduction in deforestation was 2.16%, between August 2021 and July 2022, according to data from Deter”, he says.
Almeida argues that heavy investment is needed to reverse the situation of deforestation in the country. “The recipe that we have applied today does not present the results that we need to achieve, and that is clear”, he says. “Deforestation is not falling. It is necessary to look for other ways to improve this performance.”
The Declaration on Forests was the first document of its kind that Brazil signed, which, according to Herschmann, can be explained by the fact that, even in the best moments of national environmental policy, deforestation was always seen as a less urgent issue.
“Of course, having signed this declaration was a good thing, an important step,” says Herschmann. “The problem is that we know that the government never really intended to fulfill it.”
For Maycon Yuri Nascimento Costa, a political scientist specializing in environmental policies, given the reduction in resources and the number of employees of bodies such as Ibama and ICMBio, as well as the freezing of the Amazon Fund, the commitment made by Brazil at COP26 is questionable.
“Without officials to supervise, with threats and even death of those who fight to stop deforestation and illegal mining, how can we expect that Brazil can, one day, reach this goal?”, he opines.
Although the agreement signed at COP26 is not legally binding, recalls Costa, other countries, as well as international organizations, have tools to put pressure on Brazil.
“There are very strong economic actions. In 2021, for example, European supermarkets threatened to boycott Brazilian products from areas of deforestation”, he recalls.
At COP27, the next UN climate conference, to be held in November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Brazil’s shattered image should inspire concern, says the political scientist.
“Either Brazil makes viable commitments and dialogue, or we will continue to be viewed with suspicion and as a threat to the environment.”
In the past, however, Brazil has come closer to reducing illegal deforestation, experts recall. In 2004, the PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon) was implemented. Between that year and 2012, the region experienced an 83% decrease in deforestation.
“PPCDAm worked because it was an inter-ministerial initiative, with the participation of state governments and with economic incentives to stop the destruction. We need to reintroduce these public policies that have already proven to be successful”, says Herschmann.
For Almeida, from Inpe, it is necessary to invest on two fronts, simultaneously. On the one hand, it is necessary to create production chains that coexist with the forest, instead of trying to replace it. On the other hand, the presence of the state and penalties for environmental crimes are necessary.
To this, Dinamam Tuxá, executive coordinator of Apib (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil), adds the urgency of including in the debates the communities most vulnerable to the effects of deforestation.
“We are the ones who are in the territories and we protect them”, says Tuxá. “Without dialogue with traditional communities, it is impossible to build a consistent policy.”
The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.
