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RÍO DE JANEIRO – Last month was the second-worst August on record for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, according to official figures released on Friday, prompting fresh criticism of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies.
A total of 1,359 square kilometers (525 square miles) in the Brazilian Amazon, 23 times the size of Manhattan, was lost last month, according to satellite data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
The figure triggered new warnings about the future of the Amazon, a year after global outcry broke out over the huge fires that devastated the world’s largest rainforest, a vital resource in slowing climate change.
Last year was the worst for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since INPE began keeping records in 2015.
Under international pressure, Bolsonaro responded by deploying the army to combat slash-and-burn agriculture and other causes of deforestation in the Amazon, about 60 percent of which is in Brazil.
His government has been quick to claim success. And indeed, deforestation last month was 20 percent lower year-on-year than in 2019, the worst August on record.
But deforestation continues to advance at almost the same rate: the 6,087 square kilometers lost so far this year represent a fall of just five percent compared to last year, according to INPE data.
“Given that the reduction is compared to 2019, when deforestation broke all records, it does not change the level of destruction in the Amazon, which remains alarming,” the Brazil office of the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a statement. .
“This is further proof that the military operation (against deforestation) … is not working,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the environmental group Climate Observatory.
Monthly deforestation has exceeded 1,000 square kilometers seven times in total, six of them under Bolsonaro, who took office in January 2019.
“The devastation has reached a whole new level,” Astrini said in a statement.
Critics accuse Bolsonaro of attacking the Amazon by cutting environmental protection programs and calling for the legalization of agriculture and mining on protected lands.
In addition to international concern, fires have recently devastated the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, a region famous for its wildlife.
Less than nine months out of the year, the Brazilian Pantanal has already registered an annual record of 12,703 fires, according to INPE data.
Amazon rainforest, Brazil, deforestation, environment, climate change, Jair Bolsonaro
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