The data on deforestation in Brazil comes from the National Space Institute’s Deters monitoring program. The scale of the devastation in 2023 is significant as President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has vowed to prevent the massive logging that took place under predecessor Jaír Bolsonaro’s regime.
The current government has introduced increased control and tougher measures against those who try to cut down rainforest to create, among other things, farming and grazing land.
Increased Amazon control
The message on Friday about the sensitive rainforest was positive. Just over 5,000 square kilometers of forest were felled last year, which is a decrease of around 50 percent from the year before.
Brazil’s huge savannah areas, also known as cerrado, are worse off. According to Deter, deforestation in the savannah increased by 43 percent last year, compared to the year before. The savanna has far from the same species richness as the rainforest, but the cerrado in Brazil is perhaps the most species-rich compared to other tropical grasslands in the world.
The scrutiny of the destruction of the savannah is not as extensive as that of the fabled Amazon.
Sensitive ecosystem
But the fragile cerrado is threatened by drastic logging and harmful slash-and-burn to make way for, among other things, soy plantations and cattle ranching.
– We saw important environmental progress in 2023. A sharp reduction in deforestation in the Amazon was the highlight, says Mariana Napolitano at the World Wide Fund for Nature in Brazil.
– Sadly, we do not see the same development in the cerrado. This damages the (similar) vegetation zone and its impact on the ecosystem.
Environmental organizations criticize the government for not paying attention to the crisis in Brazil’s savanna in the same way as the logging of the Amazon.