Rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon at its lowest level in nine years

According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), 6,288 square kilometers of primary forest were deforested in the region over these twelve months. This is “the lowest result in the last nine years of monitoring”, noted the director of Inpe, Gilvan Oliveira.

Furthermore, further south, the rate of damage to the Cerrado, the savannah richest in biodiversity in the world, has also fallen by 25.7%, with a loss of vegetation equivalent to 8,174 km2, according to the same source.

The destruction of the Amazon and the Cerrado is essentially the work of farmers wanting to increase their land for crops and livestock, activities whose development Jair Bolsonaro has always encouraged.

Lula’s promise

The Brazilian Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, welcomed a “significant drop” in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon and the Cerrado, a few days before taking part in the United Nations conference on climate change (COP29), which will be held next week in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office as president of Brazil in January 2023 – for the third time – making forest protection one of his priorities.

He has pledged to reduce deforestation in Brazil to zero by 2030 by reversing the environmental policies of his far-right climate change-skeptical predecessor Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

Under the Bolsonaro government, an ally of the powerful agribusiness lobby, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon jumped 75.5% compared to the previous decade.

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