Significant reduction in deforestation in the rainforest
We have good news from the Brazilian rainforest. Since the new President Lula da Silva took office, deforestation of the rainforest has decreased. Both the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and the Brazilian National Institute for Spatial Research (INPE), which uses satellite data to record the destruction of the rainforest, have reported that 59% less was cleared in September this year than in the previous year, or 590 square kilometers in the Brazilian part of the world's largest rainforest area.
For over 30 years, the team at the National Brazilian Institute for Spatial Research (INPE) has been recording the annual rate of deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest. What used to be laborious manual work using printed satellite photos is now computer-based. "We had to deal with all these adversities and at the same time overcome international mistrust," explained Thelma Krug, co-founder of the program and 2018 Vice President of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Today, the program is recognized. No government in the world would dare to doubt our data."
In the first five months of this year, 31 percent less area was logged than in the same period last year, according to the South American country's Ministry of the Environment. Between August 2022 and July 2023, an area of 7,952 square kilometers was deforested in the Brazilian Amazon - the lowest figure in four years, but still too high, in our opinion.
A large proportion of the open spaces created by deforestation are used for commercial agriculture, particularly for cattle breeding and the cultivation of soy. But the search for precious metals is also one of the reasons for overexploitation.
"We are on the right track, but we are still a long way from reaching our goal," says Kolja Leoni, spokesman for the environmental protection organization WWF in Germany, in an interview with ZDFheute, which sees the decline as an "important sign" that the resumption of controls, the limitation of lending and other measures have proven effective. Deforestation in the entire Amazon region must be stopped completely.
Bad news from the Cerrado
While the situation in the Brazilian rainforest is moving in the right direction, the development in the Cerrado, the humid savannahs in south-eastern Brazil, is a negative one: half of the total area has already been destroyed and deforestation increased by 35 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year, Leoni told ZDFheute. The approximately 25 million people living in the Cerrado region, including the indigenous population, are therefore already experiencing the consequences of the destruction.
The Cerrado is Brazil's most important groundwater reservoir.
"A loss of vegetation density and diversity will have serious consequences for agriculture and the water supply of metropolitan regions and urban areas."
