MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian Amazon Rainforest: Deforestation of more than 10,000 square kilometers in one year

The data for this period had already been officially disclosed in November, but now it was reviewed and it was found that deforestation is higher than previously thought

The Brazilian Amazon has never lost so many square kilometers in eleven years. Between August 2018 and July 2019, 10,129 square kilometers of jungle were lost, according to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe).

The data for this period had already been officially disclosed in November, but now it was reviewed and it was found that deforestation is higher than previously thought (9,762 square kilometers of destroyed jungle were then detected).

The majority of deforestation, detected from space with images from the Landsat satellite, is concentrated in 84.5% in four of the nine states that make up the Legal Amazon: Pará, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Rondônia.

About half of the reported figure is concentrated in Pará, where the rain forest is most destroyed: 4,172 square kilometers of forest were lost, 52% more than in the previous period.

The new figure represents an increase of 34.4% compared to the previous period when 7,536 square kilometers of deforested jungle were recorded.

The satellite images that detect these deforested areas do so from land that has more than six devastated hectares.

INPE data confirms that deforestation grew in the first year of the government of Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in January 2019.

The president has promoted initiatives questioned by environmentalists, such as the reduction of taxation in the Amazon, and the incentive of agriculture in the region.

In July 2019, Bolsonaro dismissed the then INPE president precisely because of his disagreement regarding the methods used by the agency to measure deforestation.