Consolidated data from the Satellite Deforestation Monitoring Project (Prodes), released in Brasília this Wednesday (8), indicate a 21.8% drop in deforestation in the Legal Amazon, 19.5% for non-forest areas in the Amazon. biome and 9.2% in the Pantanal. The information refers to the period between August 2022 and July 2023, compared to the previous cycle.
For the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, the positive results are the result of the relevance given to the sectoral policy by the federal government, which involved the leadership of the Civil House and the participation of 19 ministries to address the issue with transversality. “Then you create a positive synergy in which states, municipalities, everyone comes to the agenda, but this has to be ongoing policy”, she reinforced.
The data also revealed a greater drop in the 70 priority municipalities for combating deforestation in the Legal Amazon, with a reduction of 42% in the period calculated. According to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), which operates Prodes, these territories concentrated 75% of the felling of native vegetation in 2022.
The balance consolidated the annual deforestation rate at 9,064 square kilometers (km²) in the Legal Amazon, with a difference of 0.7% compared to that published in November 2023, estimated at 9,001 km².
During the presentation, information was brought forward about the series of daily deforestation alerts, accompanied by the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (Deter), with a 55% reduction in the period from August 2023 to April 2024, when compared the same period in the previous year. “This shows that this downward trend continues for the Amazon”, explains the coordinator of the Biomas Brasil program, from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Cláudio Almeida.
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For the first time, data was also presented from the non-forest area in the Amazon, which covers an area of almost 28 thousand km² and which was previously not monitored. The data revealed the destruction of 584.9 km² of this part of the biome.
According to Almeida, this region also contains endemic species, which only grow in the biome, and represents a very large area, equivalent to twice the size of the Pantanal.
Pantanal
The consolidated rate of deforestation in the Pantanal in the period calculated is 723 km², with a concentration in the municipality of Corumbá, in Mato Grosso do Sul, where 52.8% of the destruction of native vegetation was recorded.
The progress in combating deforestation in Brazilian biomes was considered positive by Marina Silva. “This is the result of public policy action based on evidence and allocation of resources in prioritization and strategy development.”
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The monitoring carried out by Inpe for more than 36 years began in the historical series of the Legal Amazon, in 1988 and, for the other biomes, in the year 2000. Data on the Cerrado were released in December 2023, when the deforestation rate was consolidated at 11,011 km², and showed a 3% increase in the destruction of the biome.
Tags: Deforestation Amazon falls Pantanal
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