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Deforestation in the Amazon is declining significantly

30.6.2023

Translation: machine translated

In the first few months of President Lula's term of office, significantly less Amazon rainforest was destroyed than in the previous year. But the crisis months are yet to come.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula for short, took office with the promise to stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in his country and, if possible, put an end to it. Current figures now show that deforestation rates have actually fallen significantly in the first few months of his term of office. Brazil's National Institute for Space Research announced that deforestation fell by more than 30 per cent in the first five months of 2023 compared to the previous year. In April, deforestation was even more than two thirds lower than in April 2022, but only 10 per cent lower in May. Under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, however, the destruction of the ecosystem had increased by around 60 per cent compared to the period of his predecessor's government.

Bolsonaro actively encouraged land grabbing and deforestation in the Amazon basin, cancelled or relaxed numerous environmental laws and cut funding to environmental authorities. One of Lula's first measures, however, was to strengthen these institutions again and provide them with the necessary funding. Since the beginning of the year, official bodies have therefore been cracking down more strictly on violations of environmental regulations and penalising breaches of the law with sometimes harsh punishments. Since then, there has been a sharp decline in the number of alerts when deforestation is detected via satellite.

At the beginning of June 2023, Lula also presented his plan to stop illegal deforestation by 2030. The Amazon Fund, which international partners have so far provided with several hundred million euros to protect the ecosystem, is intended to help in this endeavour. In addition, a committee of the Brazilian Senate is working on a project with which Brazil will collect money as a climate protection measure if the country protects its forests in return.

The coming weeks will show whether the slowdown in deforestation in Amazonia was just a brief respite. The dry season is approaching in the region, which is used intensively for slash-and-burn. This is exacerbated by El Niño, as the weather anomaly intensifies drought in the Amazon basin: After three years of La Niña, a change in conditions is now imminent.

However, the fiercest opponents of forest protection are to be found in the Brazilian Congress, which is dominated by Bolsonaro's followers and in which many members have close ties to the agricultural industry. They have already introduced laws that, for example, would grant environmental authorities fewer access rights to land ownership data or make it more difficult or even impossible to designate new protected areas for indigenous people. In addition, some heavily armed gangs are now operating in the Amazon basin, dominating the illegal gold and timber trade, for example.

Spectrum of Science

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Cover image: Shutterstock / Tarcisio Schnaider

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