Amazon has record deforestation in October

The area deforested in the Amazon in October this year was 903.86 km². The number is the highest ever recorded by Deter, a program run by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), starting in 2015.

Last Friday (4), the partial number, updated until October 28, was 813.2 km², but the expectation was that the deforested area could still increase.

The deforestation record for October becomes public amid Brazil’s participation in COP27, the UN (United Nations) conference on climate change. On Monday (7th), the country was excluded from the Partnership of Leaders for Forest and Climate.

The initiative has 26 countries, some of them Amazon, such as Colombia and Ecuador, and the European Union. The Itamaraty justified the absence by stating, in a note, that there are forums with a better format to “deal with the needs of developing countries”. Brazil leads the way in cutting down forests.

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.

The rate for October last year, also a record, was published during Brazil’s participation in the COP in Glasgow, but the Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite, said at the time that he was not aware of the data.

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. However, the high rates recorded by Deter may indicate that Prodes will also publish high data.

All of the highest monthly deforestation figures recorded by Deter until October of this year occurred under Bolsonaro’s administration.

The recent history data begins in 2015, when there was an update to the sensors of the Deter program that made it impossible to make a proper comparison with previous years, where there was lower accuracy.