Brazil lost 8.5 million hectares of native vegetation between 2019 and 2023, an area twice the size of Denmark. The statistics were released this week in the Annual Deforestation Report in Brazil (RAD), which identified agriculture and livestock as being responsible for 97% of deforestation during this period.
The survey shows an 11.6% decrease in the deforested area in the country last year compared to 2022. In 2023, 1.8 million hectares of native vegetation were cleared, compared to 2.1 million hectares the previous year.
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The two largest biomes in the country, the Amazon and the Cerrado accounted for over 85% of the deforested area in 2023. For the first time in the annual reports, initiated five years ago by MapBiomas, there was a reversal: the Cerrado savanna, which spans 11 states from the center to the northeast, became the biome with the largest deforested area.
A total of 1.11 million hectares of native vegetation were lost in the Cerrado. This represents nearly two-thirds of the deforestation during this period across Brazil and about 2.4 times more than the destruction recorded in the Amazon, according to the report. This marks a 68% increase in deforestation in the Cerrado compared to 2022.
Conversely, deforestation in the Amazon saw a 62% reduction during this period, with 454,000 hectares cleared, representing 25% of the total deforested area in the country last year.
This shift in the biomes’ positions has also led to a change in the type of vegetation being cleared. For the first time, there was a predominance of loss in savanna formations (54.8%), followed by forest formations (38.5%) which had predominated in the previous four years.
Change in scenario
The Cerrado region is considered to be the last agricultural frontier in Brazil and plays a significant role in national production. With intensive cultivation of soybeans, corn, and cotton, it is the fourth-largest grain-producing area in Brazil.
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The land in the Cerrado is attractive for exploitation as they are significantly cheaper than those in the traditional agricultural hubs of the South-Central region of Brazil.
Furthermore, its notably flat topography allows for mechanized farming, thereby increasing productivity, according to Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation). Over the past 10 years, grain production has increased by 92%, from 18 million to 35 million tons per harvest. The trend suggests that more areas will be used for this purpose.
“Soybean cultivation has advanced into areas of native vegetation, indicating a direct conversion to soy. However, pasture areas are also being converted to soy which ‘pushes’ pastures and leads to deforestation of new areas,” explained Daniel Silva, a conservation specialist at WWF-Brazil.
Experts claim another explanation lies in the changes to the Brazilian Forest Code which allows for much greater suppression in properties in the Cerrado than in the Amazon, making it difficult to monitor and control.
“We have seen a decrease in deforestation in the Amazon where, due to more restrictive legislation, the destruction was mostly illegal. This scenario makes monitoring easier, explaining the rapid drop in rates with enforcement actions last year,” stated Marcos Rosa, technical coordinator at MapBiomas.
The law mandates that rural properties in the Cerrado protect up to 20% of their territory as a legal reserve. This limit rises to 35% in areas of the Cerrado that are within the states of the Legal Amazon. If the property is in the Amazon biome, the obligation is 80% protection.
The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change recognizes the difficulty of acting in the region.
“The situation limits the government’s ability to carry out enforcement actions. We need to have a national debate to recognize that this authorization for 80% deforestation in the Cerrado might be unsustainable,” assessed Raoni Rajão, Director of Deforestation and Fire Control Policies at the ministry.
Illegalities
MapBiomas points out that more than 93% of the area deforested in Brazil last year showed at least one sign of illegality. This percentage was slightly lower in the Cerrado, where 9.23% of the deforested area showed no signs of illegality compared to the national average of 7%. The data indicates a significant drop compared to previous years when only 4% of the entire deforested area in the country showed no signs of illegality or irregularity.
In the past five years, the country has lost 1.215 million hectares of native vegetation in Legal Reserves, corresponding to 14.2% of the entire deforested area in Brazil during the period. The biome with the largest increase in deforestation last year was the Cerrado with a total of 136,000 hectares of native vegetation being lost, a 136% increase compared to 2022.
The survey also reveals that, of the total deforested areas since 2019, only 42% had authorization or enforcement action. In practice, this means that more than half (58%) of areas with native vegetation loss in the country have yet to be monitored. This data, however, shows an improvement compared to the RAD published last year which indicated a rate of only 35% of areas with authorization or monitoring.
MapBiomas also highlights that the regulation of commodity imports by the European Union will take effect on December 30 this year. The document prohibits the purchase of products from areas that were deforested after December 31, 2020.
The RAD indicates that MapBiomas identified 208,500 deforestation alerts, with a total area of 4.89 million hectares of native vegetation conversion, since January 1, 2021. High-resolution images of these areas prove that these territories were native vegetation up to the deadline set by the European Union. It is estimated that the restriction could affect about 230,000 rural properties in the country.
