Data Signals Third Year of Vast Brazil Amazon Deforestation
upstart writes:
Data signals third year of vast Brazil Amazon deforestation:
Preliminary government data released on Friday indicates annual deforestation in Brazil's Amazon may have surpassed 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles) for the third straight year, continuing a worrisome jump since President Jair Bolsonaro assumed office.
The area deforested from August to July - the 12-month period that is Brazil's reference - was 8,793 square kilometers, just below last year's record, according to daily alerts compiled by the National Institute for Space Research's Deter monitoring system.
That data is considered a leading indicator for complete calculations released near year end from the more accurate system, Prodes. It uses at least four different satellites to capture images, addressing oversights in preliminary data caused by lower resolution and cloud cover.
[...] Before Bolsonaro's term began in 2019, the Brazilian Amazon hadn't recorded a single year with that much deforestation in over a decade and, between 2009 and 2018, the average was 6,500 square kilometers. The far-right president has encouraged development of the biome and dismissed global handwringing about its destruction as a plot to hold back the nation's agribusiness. At the same time, his administration defanged environmental authorities and legislative measures to loosen land protections have advanced, emboldening land grabbers.
In two and a half years, the Bolsonaro government has managed to provoke a situation of destruction and chaos in the environment," Suely Araujo, a former president of the environmental regulator, Ibama, told The Associated Press. A group of factors is delegitimizing enforcement. There is an anti-policy that has no way of going right."
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