Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva announced yesterday that the area of the Amazon rainforest destroyed this year was 30.6% less than last year, marking the lowest level in nine years. A total of 6,888 square kilometers, roughly the size of Luxembourg, were deforested, primarily for cattle ranching, logging, and infrastructure development.
The administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has managed to reduce deforestation, in contrast to the previous far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, under whose term an area the size of Belgium was destroyed as agricultural expansion was prioritized over forest protection.
The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, with two-thirds located in Brazil, and plays a key role in combating climate change by absorbing greenhouse gases.
Lula has nonetheless faced criticism from environmentalists for approving projects that could harm the region, such as building a highway through areas of old-growth vegetation, oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River, and constructing a railway to transport soybeans to Amazon ports.
It’s worth noting that Brazil’s deforestation monitoring system covers the period from August 1 to July 30 each year, meaning that Wednesday’s report does not include recent periods when forest fires burned an area larger than Switzerland.
What is fyi.news?
