Brazil's Amazon witnesses record-breaking deforestation; an area 2.5 times the size of Delhi destroyed

• Image Credit: Internet

• Jul 11, 2022 | Dhupali Das

In June, destruction increased by 5.5 percent to 1,120 square km, setting a new high for the month.

Digital Desk: For the first half of the year, deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest reached a record high, destroying an area five times the size of New York City, as per preliminary official data released on Friday.

As per the national space research organization Inpe, 3,988 square kilometers (1,540 square miles) of the area were cleared from January to June.

This is a 10.6% increase over the same months last year, which is the highest level since the agency began compiling its current DETER-B data series in mid-2015.

In June, destruction increased by 5.5 percent to 1,120 square km, setting a new high for the month.

The world's largest rainforest, the Amazon, contains immense amounts of carbon, which are released when trees are cut down and warm the atmosphere, causing climate change.

The forest is becoming more and more deforested. For the first time, the Amazonas state in the center of the rainforest saw more destruction in the first half of the year than any other state.

On Friday, a Reuters witness observed several recently cleared places close to the road west of Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas state, where the lush jungle had been transformed into swaths littered with dried-out, fallen trees.

Manoela Machado, a researcher on deforestation and wildfires at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and the University of Oxford, said that this year's increasing deforestation is also feeding abnormally high levels of fire, which are likely to get worse in the months to come.

According to Inpe data, Brazil experienced the highest number of Amazon fires in June in 15 years, even though those blazes represent a small portion of what is typically observed when flames peak in August and September.

Typically, ranchers and land squatters start fires to clear the land for crops after loggers harvest valuable timber.

"If we have high deforestation numbers, it's inevitable that we're going to have high fire numbers as well. These are terrible news," Machado said.

Brazilian experts accused right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro of weakening environmental regulations and giving licenses to those who remove public lands for commercial purposes.

The Environment Ministry responded to a request for comments from Bolsonaro's office by stating that the administration has been "very strong" in pursuing environmental violations.

According to the ministry, deforestation decreased 3.8% from the same time last year when considering the 12 months up to June into account.

For a change in Brazil's environmental policy, environmentalists are counting on the election victory of leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who presided over a sharp drop in deforestation during his administration from 2003 to 2010.

A poll released this week showed Bolsonaro trailing Lula by 19 percentage points in the anticipated run-off. 

However, experts predict that this year will see high deforestation rates and fires as loggers and land speculators try to take advantage of the lax enforcement in advance of a possible change in leadership.

"It's really tough to be positive for the next several months," Romulo Batista, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Brasil.