Deforestation in the Amazon over the past year hit its highest level in a more than a decade, satellite data from the Brazilian space agency has revealed.
The loss of nearly 10,000 square kilometres of forest between August 2018 and July 2019 is the first official confirmation that deforestation has soared since Jair Bolsnaro became president in January .
Logging and burning of the world’s greatest rainforest jumped by 29.5 per cent in that period compared with the year before, to 9762 square kilometres, with observers noting that this is the biggest annual increase in more than two decades. It also ends a period of relatively stable losses. The average between 2012 and 2018 was 6727 square kilometres.
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Gilberto Camara, former director of the space agency, that the trend was “terrible” and showed a very strong upward trend. He predicted losses could reach 12,000 square kilometres next year, if no action is taken.
The figures don’t cover some of the worst deforestation detected between August and October. “Because deforestation continues to be so rampant, what are we going to see in 2020?” says Erika Berengeur at the University of Oxford. This year has been very wet and humid, so some trees felled by loggers this year haven’t yet been burned. “In 2020 we are going to see more fires than in 2019.”
While the law on clearing forests hasn’t changed in Brazil, Bolsonaro has been accused of encouraging loggers to clear and burn trees with his rhetoric and a drop in enforcement action. International attention and pressure came to bear on Brazil this year due to the number of intense fires burning across the Amazon. More than .
Brazilian environment minister Ricardo Salles suggested this weekend that deforestation has been rising since 2012. Berenguer says: “Yes, it was, but it was pretty stable. It wasn’t an increase like this. That’s a misrepresentation of reality.”
The data released today is from PRODES, one of two systems maintained by Brazil’s space agency, INPE, and is used as the official gauge of annual deforestation rates. Previously high deforestation years have triggered a strong clampdown by Brazil, but such a response is unlikely under the current government, whose ministers have attempted to cast doubt on INPE’s figures.
A second set of INPE satellite data – used by authorities to track incidences of deforestation rather than annual change – suggests that rapid losses have continued since July. Nearly 4,000 square kilometres have been lost between the start of August and end of October, according to this system, which typically reports much lower figures than PRODES because it takes lower resolution images.
