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Brasilia (AFP) – Almost 1,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon were lost in October, the worst data in that month since records were kept, in 2015, according to official data released this Friday, less than two months after the end of President Jair Bolsonaro’s term.
The 904 square kilometers of area logged last month represents 3% more than that of October 2021, an old record for the month, according to data from the DETER satellite surveillance system of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
The NGO WWF-Brasil warned that along with the increase in deforestation, the number of fires “shot up” after the presidential elections.
“The increase in deforestation and fire alerts was expected, but even so the numbers for the first days of November are frightening, they show a rampant race for devastation,” the NGO said in a statement.
During the tenure of Bolsonaro, a climate change denier, the average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 75% compared to the previous decade, mainly caused by the felling of trees for the expansion of grazing area for cattle and the agricultural frontier. , according to experts.
The Brazilian Amazon corresponds to 59% of the Brazilian territory, distributed among nine states.
More than half of the destroyed area was concentrated in the state of Pará (north), with 435 km2 cleared.
The accumulated deforestation between January 1 and October 31 of this year represents the highest value in the historical series of the DETER system, noted WWF-Brazil, with the destruction of 9,494 km2.
The leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro on October 2 in the presidential runoff, has promised “a living Amazon”, reactivating policies to protect the forest and fight deforestation, differentiating himself from the far-right president.
“The new government will have a lot of work to repair the situation, to end the perception that the Amazon is a lawless land,” Raul do Valle, a public policy specialist with the NGO WWF-Brazil, said in a statement.
Lula will travel to Egypt next Monday, invited by the president of that country, Abdel Fatah al Sisi, to participate in the COP27 climate conference, his international preview before taking office on January 1, 2023.
The leftist administration intends to regain international prestige with an agenda focused on environmental protection.
