The monitoring of deforestation in the cerrado by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) could end in 2022, if a new source of funds is not found. There are resources only to continue the work for the next three or four months.
On the last day of 2021, Inpe released the high data on deforestation in the cerrado, the most biodiverse savanna on the planet and which is of great importance for the country, especially when considering the biome’s role as a water producer, feeding several hydrographic basins.
The cerrado lost 8,531 km² from August 2020 to July 2021, according to data from the Prodes cerrado — the highest value since 2015 — and 7,900 km² in the previous year.
Prodes and Deter are Inpe’s programs that monitor deforestation in the biome.
Both projects are not part of the Union budget and, therefore, depend on extra-budgetary resources. The monitoring program has already received resources from Germany and the Ministry of the Environment, for the period of structuring and building the maps.
Since 2016, monitoring has been supported by resources from the FIP (Forest Investment Program), managed by the World Bank and supported by the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation). The problem is that the funding source had a deadline: 2020. The validity of the funding, however, was extended until December 2021.
Now, past 2021, it is still uncertain how monitoring will continue. According to leaf found, there is an expectation in the monitoring team that some resource will appear to keep at least part of the programs active.
There is also movement at Inpe in search of funds.
A leaf questioned Inpe, the Ministry of the Environment and the MCTI about the situation and possible solutions. There was no response as of the publication of this report.
The stoppage of monitoring was already on the radar of Inpe researchers. In September last year, in a live by the Environmentalist Parliamentary Front, Luis Maurano, a scientist at Inpe, pointed out that FIP funding would only go until the end of 2021 and that, after that, it would not be possible to add more term.
From June 2016 to the end of last year, according to Maurano, the program would have received about US$ 4.4 million.
“It’s a low-cost project compared to the value that this data has for the market, but we don’t have investment,” Cláudio Almeida, coordinator of the monitoring program for the Amazon and other biomes, told the G1 portal. According to him, R$ 2.5 million a year would be needed to keep the monitoring going.
For comparison, motorcycle riders in support of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) have already cost about R$5 million to the public coffers, according to a survey by the leaf, a value that would allow two years of monitoring. Such expenses take into account expenses with the federal government’s payment card, informed by the General Secretariat of the Presidency, and the expenses assumed by the states to guarantee the safety of the population and Bolsonaro’s entourage.
Bolsonaro and members of his government constantly complain about the attention paid to deforestation data in Brazil. In 2019, the president even said that the deforestation data in the Amazon did not correspond to reality and that the then director of Inpe, Ricardo Galvão, could be “at the service of some NGO”.
Bolsonaro’s speech was answered by Galvão, who, after the case, ended up exonerated from office.
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