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The ruins of an illegal gold mining site in a Yanomami reserve in the northern Amazon. Deforestation in Brazil is expanding even into legal spaces and indigenous lands where criminals have rarely ventured into the past.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased considerably last year, again. Estimates to be published this week through the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) will show that groundmounts have an increase of at least 28% in the existing follow-up year, from August to July, to last year.
This is the steep rise through Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has fulfilled his promise of a crusade to facilitate environmental law enforcement and increase progression in the Amazon.
The figures come from Brazil’s Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER), which uses low-resolution satellite photographs to temporarily identify new deforestation and alert the government to imaginable illegal deforestation. More than 8,700 square kilometers (km2) of forest cover number one have already disappeared from photographs since August 2019, according to knowledge updated until July 23, compared to 6,800 km2 in the last 12 months. (Data from the last week will be released on August 7; since July is the peak time for deforestation at the top of the Amazon, the number is likely to accumulate more)
Although the system doesn’t identify the causes of deforestation, other studies show the vast majority is illegal, carried out by ranchers, loggers, miners, and land grabbers who seek to profit from the occupation and exploitation of public forest lands.
Deforestation has been slowly rising in Brazil since 2013, but Bolsonaro’s actions and words have given it a big boost. “Deforestation is a high-risk enterprise, profoundly connected to political decisions and rhetoric that influence the perception of that risk,” says Raoni Rajão, an environmental policy researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Developers now feel a sense of impunity, Rajão says. Clearings are even on the rise within legally protected areas and Indigenous lands, where criminals rarely ventured in the past. Meanwhile, law enforcement operations are down, and field agents who combat illegal miners have been publicly reprimanded and subjected to internal investigations by their own agencies.
DETER is an alert formula and optimized for accurate surface measurements, but scientists say it is still an intelligent deforestation thermometer. Last year, however, Bolsonaro called DETER’s disturbing estimates “lies” and fired INPE director Ricardo Galvao. Figures published later through the Amazon Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project, a higher resolution formula also operated through INPE that produces official knowledge on deforestation in Brazil, were even worse. They showed that 10,100 km2 of forest had been cut down between August 2018 and July 2019, an accumulation of 34% over the past year.
The resurgence of deforestation—by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from Brazil—is “a disaster for Brazil’s international reputation,” says Luiz Aragão, head of INPE’s Remote Sensing Division. The country is under increasing pressure from foreign governments and investors to protect the forest, along with its carbon and biodiversity, or face diplomatic and economic consequences. “We need clear messages and decisive actions against these illegal activities,” Aragão says. “Brazil needs to re-establish its environmental order if we have ambitions to grow economically and participate as a leader in the discussion of global issues.”
Bolsonaro has taken some steps to protect the forest. Earlier this year he re-created the Amazon Council—composed largely of military officers—to oversee sustainable development of the region, and in May he authorized the deployment of the armed forces to combat environmental crimes there. Another decree on 15 July made the use of fire in the Amazon illegal for the next 4 months.
The latter measure may indeed help reduce deforestation, if properly enforced. After trees are felled, developers must burn the downed vegetation to clear the land for pastures or cropland, Rajão says. He also sees hope in the fact that the amount of forest felled in the first 3 weeks of July was lower than in July 2019, although still much higher than in the same month of previous years. “That may be a positive sign that the rate of deforestation is slowing down a bit,” he says. “But we have to wait and see.”
Herton Escobar is a science and environment journalist in São Paulo, Brazil.
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