The Amazon River, where Pierre Massyn spent months in Parintins in 1986. (Photo: Provided/ Pierre Massyn)
Deforestation in the Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a report published on Wednesday.
South America’s largest country lost 985,000 ha of native vegetation last year – a 20.6% decrease compared to 2024, the MapBiomas monitoring network announced.
This is the lowest figure since the network started recording this information in 2019.
However, the figure does not include forests destroyed by fires, but after a record fire season in 2024, the country was largely spared from serious wildfires last year.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, who will stand for a fourth term in October, has made the fight against deforestation a focal point of his government.
The preservation of forests is essential in the fight against climate change, as trees act as natural carbon sinks.
After four years of large-scale logging under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula pledged to completely eradicate illegal deforestation by 2030.
The decline in deforestation was recorded in all six of Brazil’s major ecosystems.
“We are seeing an increase in enforcement actions and penalties (…) which is directly related to the decrease in deforestation in all of Brazil’s forests,” Marcos Rosa, technical coordinator of MapBiomas, told AFP.
The dense Colombian Amazon. (Photo: Raul ARBOLEDA / AFP)
However, the rate of destruction remains high.
In the Amazon – the world’s largest rainforest – where deforestation has decreased by 23.5%, five trees are still cut down every second.
The area that was hardest hit last year was again the Cerrado, a vast and biodiverse savanna south of the Amazon.
This region alone was responsible for more than half of all deforestation.
MapBiomas, a consortium of universities, non-governmental organizations and technology companies, says agriculture was responsible for 99% of the loss of vegetation.
Lula is keen to highlight his environmental successes ahead of the election.
Last year he hosted the COP30 climate summit in Belém, the gateway to the Amazon biome.
However, environmental activists have criticized him for his support for a large oil project near the mouth of the Amazon River.