Deforestation breaks new record in the cerrado – 07/06/2023 – Environment

While deforestation in the Amazon has been falling, in the cerrado it has hit a new record. In the first five months of 2023, 3,532 km² of destruction were recorded in the cerrado, 35% more than seen in the same period of the previous year.

The month of May specifically saw an 83% explosion in deforestation alerts in the cerrado, reaching 1,326 km².

Data from Deter —Inpe’s (National Institute for Space Research) monitoring program— were released this Wednesday (7th) by the Ministry of the Environment.

In the cerrado, 77% of deforestation was recorded on properties registered in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR). “In more than 3/4 of the deforestation we can have access to who is responsible for these areas”, stated André Lima, Extraordinary Secretary for Deforestation Control and Territorial Environmental Planning.

“It is estimated that more than half of deforestation in the cerrado is authorized by state environmental bodies”, he added. The secretary also stated that the folder also estimates that half of this destruction is illegal.

“It is not possible to say with certainty and certainty which universe of areas were legally authorized and it is not possible to say whether these authorizations were legal”, stated the Executive Secretary for the Environment, João Paulo Capobianco. He stated that the portfolio has already requested information from state authorities.

“The idea is to be very tough at this moment when we need to contain deforestation”, completed the president of Ibama, Rodrigo Agostinho. “in these assessed properties, we have already been able to prove that they did not have authorization [para desmatar]”, he completed.

In June, the first meeting of the PPCerrado commission, a program to control deforestation and restore the biome, will take place.

In the Legal Amazon, deforestation fell by 31% compared to the same period of the previous year, returning to the level registered in 2020. There were 1,986 km² of forest cleared against 2,867 km² in 2022, 2,543 km² in 2021 and 2,038 in the previous cycle.

“Almost half is deforestation that we are registering within the Rural Environmental Registry, the CAR, areas where there is private interest, so to speak”, stated André Lima.

He stated that now the government’s actions will focus on prosecuting and even suspending the rural registration of landowners where there is illegal deforestation. Lima also said that 21% of deforestation in the Legal Amazon was in settlements and 15% in areas of public forests not intended.

“Inpe alerts are turning into infraction notices”, said the president of Ibama (Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), Rodrigo Agostinho. “Soon afterwards, these areas will be embargoed”, he added.

Agostinho also stated that, this year, more than R$ 2 billion in fines were imposed by the institute on more than 2,200 properties.

“We don’t have any other rural environmental records in Brazil focusing on indigenous lands”, said the Executive Secretary for the Environment, João Paulo Capobianco.

Deforestation in the Legal Amazon and in the cerrado region has been recording records in 2023. In April, for example, the biome reached its maximum in the historical series started in 2019, with more than 700 km², according to monitoring.

The Amazon, in the first four months of the year, for the first time exceeded 1,000 km² of registered deforestation.

Deter maps and issues deforestation alerts with the aim of guiding actions by Ibama and other inspection bodies. The results represent an early warning, but they are not closed data on deforestation.

The month of May marks the beginning of the dry season, when fires, whether natural or caused by human intervention, tend to increase the amount of forest cleared.

A MapBiomas survey showed that Brazil burned, on average, 160,000 km² of vegetation per year from 1985 to 2022. The number is equivalent to more than three and a half times the area of ​​the state of Rio de Janeiro (43,700 km²) .

The study is based on 150,000 satellite images, analyzed using artificial intelligence to identify areas with fire records.

Together, the Amazon (43.6%) and the Cerrado (42.7%) concentrated more than 86% of the area burned in the last 37 years.

In the cerrado, an average of 79,000 km² have been burned every year since 1985, an area larger than that of entire countries, such as Scotland (77,900 km²). In the case of the Amazon, the annual average was 68,000 km² —almost an Ireland (84,400 km²).

The two biomes also have high rates of fire recurrence, that is, regions that burn more than once in relatively short periods of time.

In the Amazon, 39% of the burned area caught fire only once between 1985 and 2022, while another 48% burned from two to four times.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}