Deforestation in the Amazon soars and reaches a record in 12 years

Bad news for the planet.

Deforestation in the Amazon - the annual figure by which the rest of the world measures Brazil's environmental performance - has skyrocketed in the last year to the highest level in the last 12 years.

The largest rainforest in the world, key to curbing climate change, lost 11,088 square kilometers of trees, according to the annual balance released this Monday by the authorities.

This 9.5% increase over the previous year highlights the serious effects of the president's policy, Jair Bolsonaro, of weakening environmental inspections, encouraging impunity for land invaders and despising indigenous people who want to preserve their lands. .

The Amazon is so vast that Greenpeace has made some accounts to make it easier to understand the caliber of the loss.

There are 626 million trees cut down.

It is as if every minute of the last year the Amazon had lost the equivalent of three football fields to add 1.58 million stadiums.

The NGO maintains in a note that "the dismantling of environmental bodies and policies has led us to a rate almost three times higher than the goal of reducing deforestation by 2020 established by law."

Two members of the Government - both military members of the more pragmatic, less ideological wing of the Cabinet - have participated in the presentation of the data.

On the other hand, the Minister of the Environment was not with them.

"We are not here to celebrate any of this, because this is not to celebrate," said Vice President General Hamilton Mourão.

At his side, the head of Science, Marcos Montes, the first astronaut in Brazil.

The vice president has encouraged inspectors, often beaten by Bolsonaro, to continue doing their work guided by science, technology and the law.

The figure known this Monday is the result of measurements made by satellites by the Space Research Institute (INPE).

It is an annual balance that covers the area of ​​trees destroyed between August 2019 and July 2020. They always take several months to be public.

And they represent a preliminary balance that is only consolidated with the final data in the first half of the year.

The Bolsonaro government is perfectly aware that environmental policy is critical in its foreign relations, both with the European Union as it will be with the United States when Joe Biden assumes the presidency in January.

Ecology has an enormous weight in the ratification process of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement.

The deployment of thousands of Brazilian soldiers in the most sensitive areas and the creation of the Amazon Council to coordinate all the organizations involved in caring for the environment and fighting fires have not reversed the increase in deforestation that began before Bolsonaro came to power, but that has accelerated in these two years.

The destruction of the Amazon in 2004 exceeded 27,000 square kilometers (almost triple that of now).

It was Lula da Silva's first year as president.

Since then, the annual destruction of trees has decreased until reaching 4,570 square kilometers in 2012 (the minimum since there are measurements).

And from there, with Dilma Rousseff in power, the increase began again until reaching the current figure.

WWF, an NGO, highlights in a statement that the deforestation registered since Bolsonaro has governed indicates the disconnection of the Government from the challenges and opportunities (also economic) posed by the Amazon.

INPE has another system, which records alerts every month and serves to mobilize environmental inspectors or the police, who had already indicated that deforestation was still increasing.

Greenpeace criticizes that despite this "the response of the federal government to the increase in deforestation has been to mask reality, increasingly militarize environmental protection and work to stop the actions of civil society, damaging our democracy", according to a spokeswoman.

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