Even with still incomplete data, last month is close to the record of deforestation in the Amazon for the months of October, according to the recent history of Inpe (National Institute for Space Research).
Until October 29, 2021, the Amazon recorded 795.7 km² of destruction, according to data from Inpe’s Deter program. The recent record (started in 2015) of the platform belongs to October 2020, with 836 km² of forest felled. Thus, considering the daily deforestation records, the 2020 value can still be reached and even exceeded.
Deter is used to support environmental enforcement actions, but its data can also be used to observe deforestation trends.
With its environmental image damaged internationally due to the high rates of deforestation in recent years, Brazil, at COP26, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, sells the image of protecting forests.
At the event, the country signed the Declaration of Forests, with a commitment to curb deforestation. Brazil also presented the goal of ending illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2028.
Deforestation is the main responsible for greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil, which is in the ranking of the largest global emitters. Another important source of national emissions is livestock, which also ends up being the target of a methane reduction commitment signed by Brazil at COP26 last week.
The Jair Bolsonaro government (without a party) usually uses data from isolated months to affirm that the fight against deforestation has had an effect. A few recent months in 2021, in fact, had better results, but only in relation to records of forest clearing that occurred during the current federal administration.
Data show that the deforestation situation is far from comfortable. The area affected in the Amazon since July, for example, already totals more than 4,000 km², a figure not very far from the total registered in the whole of 2012, the year from which there was a growing trend in the problem.
The Bolsonaro government has used the Army to combat environmental offenses, a practice that is contested by experts for its high cost —many times higher than the budget of IBAMA, a force specialized in the task— and unimpressive results, considering the high levels of deforestation.
In the coming weeks, Inpe should release data from Prodes, the agency’s program considered to be the proper measure of deforestation in the last year (always taking into account the period from August of one year to July of the following year).
In the two previous years, the first of the Bolsonaro government, Prodes had an explosion in deforestation (which had already been pointed out by data from Deter). In both years, the destruction of the Amazon was over 10,000 km². For the current year, that is, from August 2020 to July 2021, the rate should not be too far from that, researchers estimate.
.
