Daily Times

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon has risen by a quarter since last year, official statistics show. The rainforest is also on course for its worse year on record and in the first half of 2020, 1,184 square miles – an area ten times the size of Paris – was destroyed.

Preliminary data from the country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show June was the 14th consecutive month where deforestation has increased. June marks the start of the dry season and Brazil has been criticised by a number of countries and environmental groups over large-scale deforestation and fires. Deforestation and fires in Brazil’s Amazon released 115 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide in the first half of 2020, up roughly 20 per cent from the same period a year ago, equivalent to the annual emissions of 25 million cars.

President Jair Bolsonaro is now under monumental pressure from conservationists. Destruction rose 10.7 per cent for June, compared to June 2019, and Mariana Napolitano, the head of science at WWF-Brasil said this pressure will continue to mount. ‘The pressure is increasing,’ she said. ‘The deforestation data by itself shows that we now have a very complicated situation that is out of control in the Amazon.’ If there is another increase in deforestation in July, Brazil is headed for annual deforestation of more than 15,000 square kilometers, or an area larger than Connecticut, said Ane Alencar, science director at Brazil’s Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

June marks the start of the dry season and Brazil has been criticised by a number of countries and environmental groups over large-scale deforestation and fires

That would be up from 10,129 square kilometers last year and the highest level of deforestation since 2005, according to official government data.

Inpe measures annual deforestation from August 2019 to July 2020, with the figures slated for release late in the year.

Vice President Hamilton Mourao said international investors want Brazil to show ‘results’ in fighting Amazon deforestation before they will consider participating in environmental protection projects in the country. President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change sceptic, has facilitated farming and mining projects on protected land and indigenous reserves.

‘It’s not true that we’re destroying the jungle to produce food,’ he said, also denying that Brazil was dismantling the state’s environmental protection structure. Researchers and environmental advocates blame Bolsonaro for emboldening illegal loggers, ranchers and land speculators by weakening environmental enforcement. He has also called for more commercial mining and farming in the Amazon to develop the economy. Following global pressure, especially from foreign investment firms, Bolsonaro has deployed the military to combat deforestation since May and next week is slated to ban fires in the Amazon region for 120 days.