Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon halved in 2023

RIO DE JANEIRO: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by half last year, according to figures released on Friday, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva´s government bolstered environmental policing to crack down on surging destruction.

However, the news was far less bright from the crucial Cerrado savanna below the rainforest, where clear-cutting hit a new annual record last year, rising by 43 percent from 2022, according to the national space research agency´s DETER surveillance programme.

Satellite monitoring detected 5,152 square kilometers of forest cover destroyed in the Brazilian Amazon last year, down 50 percent from 2022.

That still represented a loss 29 times the size of Washington DC in Brazil´s share of the world´s biggest rainforest, whose carbon-absorbing trees play a vital role in curbing climate change.

Meanwhile, the Cerrado, a biodiversity hotspot whose ecosystems are intricately linked with the Amazon´s, lost over 7,800 square kilometers of native vegetation last year, the highest since monitoring began in 2018.