Deforestation in the Amazon decreased for the month of November, however the overall rate for 2020 is still on the rise.
The Brazilian National Institute of Spatial Research (INPE) reported that this November’s deforestation rate in the Amazon Rainforest was 40% lower than last year’s, from 563km2 in November 2019 to 310km2 in November 2020.
The federal government claims that the reduction is due to their efforts as a result of data analysis with the Brazilian Environmental Agency, analysing police reports on logging, as well as working with the Military on policing and prevention.
However, independent scientists and experts that aren’t affiliated with the government say that a big part of the reduction is due to various reasons, including an increase of wildfires in deforestation risk areas this year. Additionally, they claim that the deforestation rate oscillates enough, that the drop may simply be a part of the normal oscillation curve.
Political analysts also point out that we are likely to see bigger efforts by the federal government to protect the Amazon, as it will face pressure by the new incoming American president, Joe Biden, who most likely will pose economic sanctions if Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and his administration don’t step up.
Unfortunately, the INPE has also reported that while November’s deforestation rate has declined, the overall deforestation of the Amazon this year is still higher than in 2019. The deforestation rate increased by 34% from August 2019 to August of this year.
Forest engineer and General Coordinator at MapBiomas, Tasso Azevedo, said, “It looks like we are slowing down, but we still have an extremely high deforestation rate.”
During this period, there was over 12 thousand square kilometres of deforestation.
