Since the beginning of the year, the largest rainforest on the planet has shrunk by 3,750 square kilometers.
Brazil’s Amazon deforestation hit a new record in the first half of 2022, while June was the worst month for forest fires since 2007, official data released Friday showed.
Since the beginning of the year, the largest rainforest on the planet has shrunk by 3,750 square kilometers, an unprecedented amount since the Deter observation satellite of the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE) began collecting public data on the phenomenon in 2016.
The previous record for deforestation in the first 6 months, which was recorded just the previous year and was 3,605 square kilometers, was already broken in the first six days of June.
Records were broken on a monthly basis in January and February, in the middle of the wet season, when forest destruction is usually much less, and then in April.
As for fires in the Amazon forest, INPE satellites detected 2,562 outbreaks last month, the highest number in 15 years (3,519 in June 2007), up 11% compared to last year.
In total, 7,533 fire outbreaks have been recorded since the beginning of 2022, a number increased by 17% compared to the first half of 2021 and the worst since 2010.
“The dry season has not yet started in the Amazon and they are already breaking records of environmental destruction,” Cristiane Mazzetti, representative of Greenpeace Brazil, said in a press release.
“We have been witnessing in recent years an environmental disaster (…). The negligence of the authorities will have an ever-greater impact on the resilience of ecosystems, causing great damage to local communities,” emphasized Mariana Napolitano, WWF’s Brazil branch.
Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who openly favors the granting of mining licenses and the agricultural use of protected areas, has received much criticism from the international community for his environmental policy.
Environmentalists mainly accuse him of favoring impunity for gold miners, farmers and timber smugglers who engage in illegal logging and of cutting the budget of environmental protection agencies.
Last year IBAMA, Brazil’s main public agency for environmental protection, spent only 41% of its budget dedicated to monitoring and auditing, according to the Climate Observatory, a collective of NGOs. .
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