Will this deadly cycle come to an end? This year again, deforestation intensified in the Brazilian Amazon. A total of 11,088 km2 rainforest have been razed in the country in twelve months, during the period from August 2019 to July 2020, according to data released Monday, November 30 by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
11,088 km2 ? This is roughly the size of the Ile-de-France region or a country like Lebanon. The equivalent of 4,300 football pitches razed every day. Three lands per minute. It has been more than a decade since the Amazon had experienced such a catastrophic toll.
You have to go back twelve years, in 2008, to find such a level of devastation in the great tropical forest. According to the INPE, deforestation increased by 9.5% compared to the previous year. This record, already worrying, becomes alarming if we compare it to the figures for 2018. In two years, deforestation in the Amazon has jumped by nearly 50%.
Terrible rampage
The most affected regions are along the roads, which now cross right through the forest. The great State of Para is here on the front line. This is where almost half of deforestation takes place according to the INPE. Several new “fronts” of deforestation are also at work, particularly in the critical region of Labrea (Amazonas), the final stage of the trans-Amazonian road and a real lock, opening onto immense untouched primary forests, refuge of the last Indian tribes. isolated country.
Behind this appalling rampage, which now seems largely out of control, environmental NGOs first see the hand and influence of one man: President Jair Bolsonaro, in power since 1er January 2019, climate skeptic assumed, entirely favorable to agro-trading and mining exploration in the Amazon.
The deforestation figures caused fear, but did not surprise anyone. For two years, Mr. Bolsonaro has indeed been working to dismantle the fragile federal agencies for the protection of nature, such as the Ibama environmental police, whose leaders have been replaced and finances dried up. According to the NGO Greenpeace, the Brazilian nature protection bodies should see their total budget fall by 35% in 2021 – and this while deforestation is in full swing.
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