It’s a massive challenge. There are more than five million square kilometers of the Legal Amazon covering almost 60% of Brazilian territory and, in the last four years, the situation was not good at all as the biome registered a 59% increase in deforestation.
According to data from Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), between August 2019 and July 2022, during the presidential tenure of Jair Bolsonaro, the Amazon lost over 35,000 km2 to deforestation. Bolsonaro’s team earned the reputation of being “an ecocidal government” and “a forest-burning machine” cutting down 59% of “the lungs of the Earth”, as the Amazon is called since it produces 6-9% of the world’s oxygen.
When the new government came to power in Brazil in 2023, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, in his third presidential tenure, promised to resume the environmental inspection policies that had been discontinued by the previous government.
Deforestation fell 33,6% in the Legal Amazon from January to June 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to data from INPE. There were 2,649 km² of area deforested in the first six months of this year against 3,988 km² of area deforested between January and June in 2022. This represents a reversal of the deforestation trend which had increased by 54% in the second half of last year.
Source: TerraBrasilis
“A good part of the deforestation in the Amazon is illegal, without authorization,” explained the President of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), Rodrigo Agostinho, in a conversation with DevelopmentAid.
Among other measures adopted to curb the devastation, the federal government has stated it applied R$2.3 billion (US$ 474 million) in fines in the Amazon this year and 7,196 infraction notices have been issued resulting in 2,200 irregular farms being seized.
“We are embargoing preferably in the worst-hit municipalities. The frontier of deforestation in the Amazon is large, it goes from Rondônia, Acre, south of Amazonas, north of Mato Grosso, in addition to Pará and Maranhão,” Agostinho added.
Is the trend expected to continue in Amazon?
The reduction observed in the Amazon may be a sign of a reversal of the upward trend of deforestation but it is still too early to say that this decrease will continue according to researchers. The main test will begin in the coming months, with the onset of drier weather in the Amazon from July, which marks the high season for deforestation and forest fires.
Isabel Garcia, a specialist in climate and emissions at Imaflora, said that she has already observed a change in the inspection and investment policy in this first semester, with the resumption of donations from the Amazon Fund, for example.
“This work of command and control, of repressing environmental crimes, is very expensive and demands a lot of investment,” explains Garcia. “And this needs to be constant so that these containments continue to happen. That is why it is important for the international community to understand the importance of bodies such as the Amazon Fund,” she added.
IBAMA, the supervisory government agency, previously employed 2,000 inspectors but it currently has less than 350 agents to inspect the whole of Brazil. Reassembling this structure is the most time-consuming and important step to maintain the challenge of zero deforestation in Brazil by 2030.
“For the Amazon, it is too early to say whether this trend will continue or not. A drop is expected for the coming months, but this has yet to be confirmed, mainly because we have many problems related to illegal land occupation, land grabbing and related activities”, explained Rodrigo Castro, a member of the Coalizão Brasil Clima. “Without people in the field, supervising, you can’t fight deforestation. Investment in human capital is paramount,” he concluded.
