Deforestation sets another record in the Amazon and complicates Jair Bolsonaro in the middle of the countryside

The Brazilian Amazon broke deforestation records in the first half of the year, according to official data released this Friday, a problem that continues to grow with the government of Jair Bolsonaro, accused of not exercising control over illegal activities that destroy the jungle.

Between January and June the largest tropical forest on the planet lost 3,987 kilometers of vegetation, 10.6% more than in the same period in 2021and an area equivalent to 483 football fields, according to data released by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe).

In the month of June alone, 1,120 square kilometers of indigenous vegetation were destroyed in that region of the country.

It also beats the sixth month of the year a record of devastation in 2022 and the figure is 130% higher than that reported in the same month of 2018, before the far-right leader came to power.

The data correspond to the Legal Amazon Deforestation Detection System in Real Time (Deter) which, based on satellite images, offers early warnings on areas that are being deforested in the Amazon.

This system collects monthly alarms on devastation in Brazil and differs from Prodes, which, with a more sophisticated technique, obtains more detailed information, but which only issues annually, between August and July of the following year, considering the reference period for measuring deforestation in the country.

The responsibility of Bolsonaro

The figures, however, are already beginning to worry experts because the trend proves it the destruction of the forest will increase for the fourth consecutive yearsomething that environmentalists attribute to the Bolsonaro government’s lack of control and oversight of jungle-destroying activities, such as the illegal logging or illicit trade in timber.

And it is that the largest tropical forest on the planet loses the equivalent of two football fields every minute.

For Mariana Napolitano, Science Manager at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Brazil, what is happening is transforming the Amazon into a “vulnerable” area, due to the impact that deforestation has on climate regulation and of precipitation. .

“Whether for our agriculture or for the supply of cities and also for the generation of hydroelectric energy, on which the country depends, it is a worrying and alarming path that must urgently be reversed”, assured the Efe agency.

According to the Climate Observatory, a network that brings together more than 70 organizations that defend the environment, the data recorded so far indicates that the rate of deforestation in 2022 will once again exceed 10,000 square kilometers, a figure that has not been reported since 2008 and this was seen again with the arrival of the far-right leader to lead the state in Brazil.

The Brazilian president defends the exploitation of Amazon’s natural resources, including in indigenous reserves where it is prohibited by law.

But the data on the destruction of the Amazon could play against him in the midst of the election campaign for the October elections, in which he will seek a new term.

Since Bolsonaro came to power on January 1, 2019, devastation rates in the jungle increased by 73% up to 13,038 square kilometers last year.

The situation is largely due to the fact that the Brazilian Amazon concentrates 72% of Brazil’s mining – mostly illegal – and is also the focus of criminals destroying native trees, as 99% of the wood sold by the country is illegally mined in that region.

This type of activity sparked violence in the jungle, where British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenist Bruno Araújo Pereira were murdered more than a month ago, who had traveled to an inhospitable area in the border region with Peru and Colombia to gather information for the book that the journalist wrote on the threats against the Indians, the same ones that the indigenist had been the victim of.

“The Amazon is given to those who kill and also to those who deforest. Today what we have is an area of ​​two football fields devastated per minute in the Amazon and with Bolsonaro those numbers tend to stay the same or even get worse,” he said. said Marcio to EFE. Astrino, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory.

Source: EFE

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