Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/BUENOS AIRES: Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon hit the highest levels of 15 years in 2022, as the world’s largest tropical rainforest lost vegetation equivalent to nearly 3,000 soccer fields per day, a report found.
The report released by Brazil’s Institute of Man and Environment of the Amazon (Imazon) – a non-profit research institute which promotes conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon – revealed that 10,573 square kilometers (4,082 square miles) of forest vegetation was lost in 2022, reaching its highest level since 2008.
The report added that the region collectively lost 35,193 km² (13,588 square miles) of vegetation in deforestation from 2019-2022.
Bianca Santos, a researcher at Imazon, expressed hope that the administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will place the protection of the Amazon on priority.
Considering the high levels of deforestation in Amazon, Santos underscored the need to take effective measures to counter ecological depreciation, including “the demarcation of indigenous lands, the restructuring of inspection authorities and the incentive to generate income with the standing forest.”
Environmental activists and defenders of Indigenous population and their territorial rights have condemned Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, insisting that he curbed environmental protections and caused ecological degradation by allowing illegal loggers, miners and ranchers to clear large swathes of land in the Amazon.
Lula’s pledge
Lula, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 in Egypt last October, vowed to reverse Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, noting that there could be “no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon.”
The new Brazilian leader also pledged to protect the region’s biomass, fortify inspection bodies and monitoring systems and tackle ecological crimes.
Experts believe that Lula will face tough challenges to reverse Bolsonaro’s environmental policies.
