Deforestation: country lost 5,000 soccer fields per day – 06/12/2023 – Environment

Deforestation in Brazil reached, in 2022, 2 million hectares lost in the six biomes. This is equivalent to 13 times the area of ​​the city of São Paulo or almost the entire state of Sergipe.

About 91% of the deforestation took place in the Amazon and in the cerrado — caatinga, pampa gaucho and Pantanal also registered an increase. On average, the country lost 5,128 football fields a day.

Agriculture is the main driver of deforestation, accounting for 96% of the destruction. Garimpo and mining represent, respectively, 0.28% and 0.05%. On the other hand, indigenous and quilombola lands remain the most preserved places in the country, representing 1.4% of the total deforestation last year.

The Atlantic Forest was the only biome that did not show an increase between 2021 and 2022, but remained parked at around 30,000 hectares lost, a high number for the biome, which today has a quarter of its original coverage.

The data are from the annual report of the MapBiomas Deforestation Alert System (SAD), published this Monday (12). The platform brings together universities, NGOs and technology companies to analyze and produce data on deforestation and fire.

The deforested area in the country has seen consecutive increases since 2019, the year the system was created. The biggest one was between that year and 2020, 34.7%. In total, 6.6 million hectares were deforested. The felling last year, however, was 24.3% faster, with 5,636 ha lost per day.

Among the ten states that deforested the most, all recorded an increase from 2021 to 2022, and Pará leads with 200,000 hectares more than Amazonas. Together with Maranhão, Mato Grosso and Bahia, they account for 66% of the total felled in the country.

According to the government of Pará, figures from Prodes, an Inpe program that publishes annual data on vegetation clearing, showed a 21% reduction in deforestation between August 2021 and July last year, compared to the same previous cycle. The Environment and Sustainability portfolio also states that it fights environmental crimes and that it develops bioeconomy and forest restoration plans, as well as economic systems for reducing emissions.

In Maranhão, one of the states pressured by expansion of the agricultural frontier, the Environment and Natural Resources folder says that the deforested area corresponds to 0.9% of the state territory, according to INPE data. It also states that the state achieved a reduction in deforestation in the Amazon biome from 170.63 km² (17,000 hectares), in 2021, to 140.47 km² (about 14,000 hectares).

The municipality of Lábrea (AM), in turn, led the deforestation among cities, with 62.4 thousand ha in 2022, an average of 171 ha per day.

When contacted, the governments of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Bahia, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and Ibama did not respond until the publication of this text.

SAD brings together alerts for the six Brazilian biomes issued by national institutions, such as Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) and international institutions. It then crosses this information and uses satellite images to validate it. The third step is the crossing with existing databases, before creating reports for each alert.

An example is the crossing of deforestation alerts generated by the Deter program, from Inpe, with the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) or the National System for Control of the Origin of Forest Products (Sinaflor).

The document says that 99% of the area deforested in the country last year has at least one indication of irregularity. About 9% of the alerts indicated overlapping regions with Permanent Preservation Areas.

On the other hand, 79% of deforestation alerts issued in 2022 are on rural properties registered in the CAR, which could facilitate inspection and action against illegalities, such as land embargo and credit limitations.

The tool was in the political disputes between the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government and the ruralist caucus in Congress, which approved the Provisional Measure of the new ministerial structure. The CAR was removed from the Environment portfolio and allocated to the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services, which was considered a setback in the government’s environmental agenda.

The government’s main bets to reach the target of zero deforestation by 2030 are plans to prevent and combat deforestation, as well as economic alternatives, inspired by the PPCDAm, in the Amazon, whose update was released last Monday (5).

With the escalation of deforestation warnings in the cerrado and levels still high in the forest, the government also presented, last Wednesday (7), remote embargo measures on rural properties and an increase in the application of fines in these areas between January and May of this year.

According to the MapBiomas report, the federal government’s command and control actions throughout the country in this period reached 10.2% of the deforested area between 2019 and 2022. If you consider 59 municipalities identified as priorities, the area rises to 17.7 %. With state efforts, 35.5%.

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