Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has just logged its smallest annual loss of forest on record, a milestone that supporters say underscores what sustained government action can achieve.
Deforestation across the Brazilian Amazon dropped to 3,335 square kilometres in the 12 months through July, according to figures released by Brazil’s space research agency Inpe. The total is the lowest in the agency’s historical series, which dates back to 1988.
That marks a decline of about 42% compared with the previous 12-month period.
Until now, the smallest annual total had been recorded in 2011-2012, when 4,571 square kilometres of rainforest were destroyed.
The contrast with earlier decades is stark. In the mid-1990s, the Amazon saw a record high of nearly 30,000 square kilometres of forest cleared in a single year.
The dataset published yesterday comes from Inpe’s PRODES satellite monitoring programme, which reports annually. The reporting year runs from August to July because cloud cover is typically lower in the middle of the year, reducing the chance that satellites will miss deforestation in obscured images.
“The figures released today are a historic achievement,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary at climate advocacy group Observatorio do Clima. He said the numbers show the world that “with political will, it is possible to curb deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.”
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to office in 2023 with a pledge to end deforestation by 2030, after forest loss surged to its highest level in 15 years during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Mr Lula is set to face Mr Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, in a presidential election runoff on 25 October, after Mr Bolsonaro outperformed expectations in the first round.
In his manifesto, the senator promised to tighten environmental oversight in the Amazon, with a focus on regions under the heaviest pressure from deforestation and wildfires.
He said law enforcement would target organised crime rather than extractive workers and small farmers.
Inpe’s release also pointed to progress in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna. Deforestation there fell by about 24% over the same period, to roughly 5,517 square kilometres — likewise the lowest level recorded since that series began in 2001.
