Leaders from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, which make up the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) are to convene Tuesday and Wednesday in Belém, the capital of the Brazilian state of Pará to discuss a new development model to put an end to the cycle of destruction that is devastating the largest tropical forest on the planet.
According to Instituto Escolhas, a Brazilian organization promoting sustainable development, South America's largest country will have to invest US$ 47 billion to recover a large area of forests in the country's six biomes, which would result in employment generation, food production, and a reduction of carbon emissions among other advantages.
Brazil's Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (Deter), of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), reported Thursday that deforestation in the Amazon in the first semester of 2023 had decreased by 33.6 % year on year and 41 % in the last 12 months.
According to a survey released Tuesday by Global Forest Watch (GFW), a forest monitoring platform developed by the University of Maryland, Brazil has lost 1.8 million hectares of primary rainforests, mostly in the Amazon, a 15% increase between 2021 and 2022, thus topping the list of nations in such a situation, followed by the Republic of Congo, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Peru.
The European Union (EU) finally approved a regulation prohibiting the entry of agricultural items, including coffee, soy, and beef, produced after 2020 in deforested areas, regardless of whether legally compliant with the producing country’s national legislation. The regulation will come into effect on December 30, 2024.
According to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), deforestation fell 31% in the Legal Amazon, from January to May 2023, compared to the same period last year, Agencia Brasil reported.
International measures on illegal deforestation are beginning to put pressure on Brazil, where banks have agreed to deny credit to meat packers that purchase cattle from such areas, according to the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban).
Agriculture has taken its toll on Latin American forests, particularly in South America's two largest countries. Argentina reached 444,535 hectares deforested to prioritize crops and cattle feeding.
Brazil’s government said it could not interfere with a landmark EU law banning imports of commodities linked to deforestation but will keep farming according to its own laws. The law approved by the European Parliament on April 19 bans imports of coffee, beef, soy, palm oil, cocoa, rubber, wood, charcoal and derived products including leather, chocolate and furniture if they are linked to forest destruction.
The European Parliament on Wednesday approved a landmark deforestation law to ban imports into the European Union that come from any land that was deforested since December 31, 2020.