As has been happening since early 2022, the Amazon experienced significant deforestation in October. The 813.2 km² of felled forest is the third largest value for the recent history of Deter, a program by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), which began in 2015.
The deforestation rate last month should still increase, however, considering that the Inpe data was only updated up to 28 of October.
The number is made public on the eve of COP27, the UN (United Nations) conference on climate change, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Once again, deforestation will be a sensitive topic for the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government at the conference — which should seek, when possible, to avoid the issue and focus on Brazil as a green energy country.
The Prodes deforestation rate, the Inpe program that measures annual deforestation in the biome, is also expected to be released shortly. Last year, Prodes data was already available during COP26, but it was only released by the Bolsonaro government after the event.
Deter is not intended to measure deforestation, but to help public policies to combat deforestation. However, from its data it is possible to observe trends of destruction.
Since the beginning of 2022, at least, the monthly deforestation data pointed out by Deter have been high and, in several cases, the highest in recent history for a given month. January, February, April, June and September were records, for example. August was just below the record of 2019, the first year of the Bolsonaro government.
It is worth mentioning that all the highest monthly deforestation numbers recorded by Deter occurred under Bolsonaro’s administration. Recent historical data begins in 2015, when there was an update to the sensors of the Deter program that made it impossible to properly compare with previous years, where there was lower accuracy.
Bolsonaro, since the beginning of his government, has minimized the importance of deforestation data and even accused Inpe of being at the service of other interests. One of these situations of accusations without evidence led to Ricardo Galvão’s exoneration.
At the time, the president had stated that Inpe’s data did not correspond to the truth and suggested that Galvão could be “at the service of some NGO.” Ricardo Galvão, who ran for federal deputy in the last election but was not elected, responded to the attacks.
Despite previously criticizing Inpe’s data and claiming that most of the Amazon is untouched – which is false -, during the debates for the presidential election, Bolsonaro used such data to claim that deforestation and fires were greater during previous governments. .
The statement is not false, but it lacks context. While other governments, in general, received a situation with higher deforestation, there were actions that brought down the levels of destruction. Meanwhile, during the Bolsonaro government, the country saw deforestation levels explode and exceed more than 10,000 km² of forest destroyed per year.
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