Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell 30.6% year-on-year, between August 2023 and July 2024, according to data published by the government. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had promised to fight decisively against the phenomenon.
According to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of Brazil, in these twelve months 6,288 square kilometers of primary forest were deforested in the region, or, it highlights, “the lowest result in the last nine years of follow-up”.
Furthermore, further south, the damage rate to the Cerrado, the richest savanna in biodiversity in the world, also fell by 25.7%, with a loss of vegetation equivalent to 8,174 km.2according to the same source.
Reduce deforestation to zero by 2030
The destruction of the Amazon and the Cerrado is essentially the work of farmers who want to increase their land for crops and livestock, activities whose development was always encouraged by former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The Brazilian Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, welcomed a “significant decrease” of the pace of deforestation in the Amazon and the Cerrado, a few days after participating in the 29thmy United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), which will be held starting November 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assumed the presidency of Brazil in January 2023 – for the third time – making the protection of forests one of his priorities. He has pledged to reduce deforestation in the country to zero by 2030 by reversing the environmental policies of his far-right predecessor, climate change skeptic Jair Bolsonaro (president from 2019 to 2022).
Under the Bolsonaro government, allied with the powerful agribusiness lobby, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 75.5% compared to the previous decade.
