Deforestation in the Cerrado and Amazon in the 1st quarter exceeds 2,000 km2 – 04/07/2023 – Environment

The first quarter of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government had numbers of deforestation alerts comparable to the worst rates of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, which dismantled environmental policies and weakened inspection over the four years in office.

According to data from Deter, the Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) system that gathers information to combat deforestation in almost real time, between January and March the destruction of the Cerrado was a record, reaching 1,375.3 km², and that of the Amazon it was the second highest in the historical series, with 844.6 km².

Deter records for the cerrado began in May 2018 and in August 2015 for the Amazon.

The area destroyed in the two biomes in 2023 is equivalent to almost twice the city of Rio de Janeiro (1,200 km²).

Until then, the highest number for the cerrado in the period had been recorded in 2022, when the lost area exceeded 1288 km². The record for the Amazon rainforest is also from last year, with more than 941 km².

When contacted, the Ministry of the Environment said that, in the Amazon, there was a 219% increase in fines for deforestation and other infractions against flora in the quarter compared to the average for the period in the previous four years. In all of Brazil, this number was 78%.

In the Legal Amazon, seizures (133%) and terms of destruction (192%) of goods and products related to environmental violations also increased, in addition to property embargoes (93%).

“These are measures that decapitalize offenders and prevent them from obtaining financing, in addition to restricting trade in illegal products,” the ministry said in a note.

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 official numbers are from another Inpe system, Prodes (Project for Monitoring Deforestation in the Legal Amazon by Satellite), and are released twice a year.

In the cerrado, deforestation this year has been concentrated in Bahia (568 km²), mainly in Piauí (215 km²), Tocantins (152 km²) and Maranhão (138 km²). In the Amazon, the highest numbers are in Mato Grosso (311 km²), Amazonas (187 km²) and Pará (161 km²).

The president of Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), Rodrigo Agostinho, says that there are several factors that explain such high rates.

“We have a deforestation belt of thousands of kilometers. There are thousands of kilometers of people with bulldozers cutting down the forest”. This belt, he explains, goes from Acre to Tocantins, passing through other states, such as Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Maranhão and Tocantins.

“The second point is that some of the tools that Ibama used and has been using, such as fines, went through a discrediting process”, he says, adding that the agency has been working with different strategies to combat environmental destruction.

These measures involve, for example, the institutional strengthening of Ibama, the embargo of illegally deforested areas so that the owners cannot obtain financing, and the restructuring of the team.

“We believe that we are on the right track. But all these actions are in fact still insufficient. Until all of this gains scale, it is still insufficient”, he says.

Because of the rain, which makes deforestation difficult, the beginning of the year generally has lower rates than the other months. Thus, the high level at this time is worrying because it may indicate an even greater increase in destruction throughout the year.

“The coming months are decisive for deforestation and for fires, since what defines the fires is also how much of the area has been deforested”, explains Ane Alencar, director of science at the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia and coordinator of the areas of Cerrado and Fogo from the Mapbiomas network.

Deter’s information is collected by satellite and the system only detects changes in forest cover greater than three hectares. Due to cloud cover —greater in rainy seasons—, not all deforestation scars are identified.

In the cerrado, cloud cover in the first quarter of this year averaged 31%, the highest ever recorded in the biome. In the Amazon, the index was 26%, on average, below that recorded in 2021 (43%), 2018 (41%) and 2022 (36%).

The launch of the new version of the PPCDAm (Action Plan to Prevent and Combat Deforestation in the Amazon) is scheduled for Monday (10), marking the first 100 days of Lula’s government.

The PPCDam is the government’s main plan to combat deforestation and its re-establishment was announced by the president on inauguration day, after its implementation was abandoned by Bolsonaro. Next, plans to combat destruction for other Brazilian biomes should be created.

The initiative is by the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, who was responsible for creating the first version of PPCDam, in 2004. The project was considered the first national policy to impact greenhouse gas emissions, which , in Brazil, come mostly from deforestation.

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