From January to June, the rainforest had alerts covering 2,650 square kilometers (1,023 square miles), up from 4,000 square kilometers—an area the size of Rhode Island—during the same period last year under former President Jair Bolsonaro. . This year’s data includes a 41% drop in alerts for June, the start of the dry season when deforestation tends to spike.
“The effort to reverse the growth curve was achieved. That is a fact: we have reversed the curve, deforestation is not increasing,” said João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of the Environment Ministry, during a presentation in Brasilia.
Capobianco noted that full-year results will depend on a few difficult months ahead. Still, the data is an encouraging sign for Lula, who campaigned last year on promises to curb illegal logging and reverse the environmental devastation of Bolsonaro’s rule. The former right-wing leader weakened environmental authorities, while his insistence on developing the Amazon region had an impact among land grabbers and farmers who have long felt maligned by environmental laws. With this they were emboldened and deforestation in the Amazon increased to its highest figure in 15 years.
The deforestation data released Thursday came from a system called Deter, run by the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency. It is an initiative that focuses mainly on detecting deforestation in real time. The most accurate deforestation estimates come from another system called Prodes, whose data is published every year.
“Simply put, we are prioritizing environmental law enforcement,” Jair Schmitt, head of environmental protection at Ibama, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
However, continued staff shortages mean the task has not been easy, he said. Many Ibama officials retired and were not replaced during the Bolsonaro government, reflecting the former president’s efforts to weaken environmental authorities. Lula has pledged to restore the workforce, but the number of Ibama agents remains the lowest in 24 years. The country has barely 700 agents, of which only 150 are available for deployment, in the entire territory — which is larger than the entire United States.
Ibama has also strengthened remote monitoring, in which deforestation is detected through satellite images, according to Schmitt. By cross-references with land registries, in many cases it is possible to identify the owner of the area, which leads to embargoes that restrict access to financial loans, among other sanctions.
Another strategy has been to seize thousands of illegally bred cattle within the embargoed areas. The measure is effective because it inflicts immediate punishment, unlike fines that are rarely paid in Brazil due to the slow appeal process, Schmitt said.
Rodrigo Agostinho, head of Ibama, pointed out in the presentation on Thursday that the value of the fines imposed in the first half of the year increased by 167% compared to the average for 2019-2022, and the agency seized 2,086 areas, that is, an increase of 111%.
“We started the year with many difficulties because of everything we inherited, reorganizing all the inspection and environmental protection teams, reactivating the technological systems,” said Agostinho.
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FUENTE: Associated Press
