For the fourth consecutive year, deforestation in the Amazon, in one year, exceeded 10,000 km². Data from the Prodes program, by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), released this Wednesday (30), show that 11,568 km² of forest fell to the ground from August 2021 to July 2022. around 11% lower than the rate of the previous year and interrupts a sequence of growth that had been going on since 2018.
In any case, the numbers remain high, especially when considering the warnings that the Amazon is not far from a point of no return, in which, due to deforestation, the forest could undergo savannization, with the loss of its biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The situation is even more critical when considering the advance of the climate crisis, which makes the extreme events that will be experienced even more frequently by the world’s population more and more explicit.
Curbing deforestation, especially in the Amazon, is central to Brazil’s role in the face of the climate crisis, given that forest clearing is the country’s main source of greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, the explosive deforestation that took place under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) has been causing problems for the international image of Brazil, which, consequently, leads to greater commercial difficulties and loss of partnerships —the prime example was the stoppage of the billionaire Fundo Amazon.
Since before the beginning of his administration, Bolsonaro has questioned data on deforestation and fires produced by Inpe, a government body. He also publicly criticized actions to combat deforestation.
Prodes data show that, again, the states that deforested the most were Pará, Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Rondônia, which account for almost 88% of documented deforestation.
Amazonas, therefore, for the second consecutive year, occupies the second position in the devastation ranking, which until 2020 was occupied by Mato Grosso. The advance of deforestation in the state is a factor of attention and concern, considering the still large well-preserved areas of the region.
In fact, Amazonas was the only one, from August 2021 to July 2022, to record an increase in deforestation compared to the previous Prodes. The growth was around 13%. Pará and Mato Grosso, the other states that complete the top 3 for deforestation, had reductions of, respectively, almost 21% and about 14%.
Despite the disclosure only this Wednesday, according to the Sheet, the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations) had already received the data before COP27, the UN climate conference, which ended on November 20. At the event, the report even questioned the Minister of the Environment Joaquim Leite about the Prodes data. The answer was, “I have no idea”.
The technical note published by Inpe, this Wednesday, has the date of November 3 registered, that is, even before the start of COP27.
During COP27, Brazil’s official stand stayed away from the Amazon and sought to spread the idea that Brazil is a country of green energy — which is true, in general terms, despite the fact that the energy matrix was a little dirtier after breathing space given to coal-fired thermoelectric plants.
In the midst of the climate crisis and its devastating effects, Leite used his speech at the climate conference to say that he does not believe in an “extremely forced reduction of emissions, via fees and costs to various economic sectors, with the risk of generating green inflation and an increase in of poverty”. The minister was also absent from the negotiations.
It is not the first time that the government of Jair Bolsonaro has avoided disclosing deforestation data at a climate COP – a tradition that had been maintained since 2005 by Brazilian governments.
In 2021, the Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite, defended during the COP26 (held in Scotland) that deforestation in the Amazon was trending downwards, using data from the last few months of Deter (System for the Detection of Deforestation in Real Time).
Although the annual data from Prodes had been available since October 27 of that year, the government only revealed the result after a note from SindCT (union of federal civil servants in the aerospace sector) stated that the information had already been available for almost a month. .
The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.
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