Rio de Janeiro: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by half last year, according to figures released on Friday, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government bolstered environmental policing to crack down on surging destruction.
However, the news was far less bright from the crucial Cerrado savanna below the rainforest, where clear-cutting hit a new annual record last year, rising by 43 per cent from 2022, according to the national space research agency's DETER surveillance programme.
Satellite monitoring detected 5,152 square kilometres of forest cover destroyed in the Brazilian Amazon last year, down 50 per cent from 2022. That still represented a loss 29 times the size of Washington DC in Brazil's share of the world's biggest rainforest, whose carbon-absorbing trees play a vital role in curbing climate change.
Meanwhile, the Cerrado, a biodiversity hotspot whose ecosystems are intricately linked with the Amazon's, lost over 7,800 square kilometres of native vegetation last year, the highest since monitoring began in 2018.
"We saw some important victories on the environment in 2023. The significant reduction in deforestation in the Amazon was a highlight," said Mariana Napolitano of environmental group WWF-Brasil.
"But unfortunately we aren't seeing the same trend in the Cerrado... That is harming the biome and the extremely important ecosystem services it provides. And we saw the impact at the end of the year, with extremely high temperatures."
Environmental groups have accused the Lula government of turning a blind eye to the destruction of the lesser-known Cerrado to appease the powerful agribusiness lobby. — AFP
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