In a rare bit of good environmental news, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon drops by 50 per cent in 2023 to a five-year low
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The Amazon. The world’s largest rainforest and the lungs of the planet often seem to be in the news for all the wrong kinds of reasons. Barely a month goes by without another tale of deforestation or forest fires causing havoc to this vital ecosystem.
The biggest causes of deforestation in the Amazon are land clearing for cattle ranching, agriculture, and logging. Climate change, leading to more forest fires, is also likely to have an increasing impact, while the development of new road networks opens up areas of the forest that were previously hard to reach. Since the 1970s, we have already lost an estimated 20 per cent of the total Amazon rainforest. This brings us perilously close to the 25 per cent deforestation that scientists have warned would be the breaking point for the Amazon. Of the remaining 80 per cent, scientists warn that 38 per cent is suffering from some kind of degradation.
The Amazon is home to about three million species of plants and animals, and with 60 per cent of the Amazon found within the borders of Brazil, this giant country contains the jaguar’s share of this vital forest. So, this month’s news that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined by 50 per cent in 2023 to a five-year low is a rare piece of good news. Brazilian government data released in early January showed that deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon had dropped by half over 2022 to reach its lowest level since 2018.
The left-wing government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), which has been in power since January 2023, has placed a lot of focus on reducing Amazonian deforestation after it soared to a 12-year high under Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Lula has said that he intends to stop illegal land clearing – the biggest cause of deforestation – completely within the Amazon by 2030.
According to preliminary satellite data supplied by INPE, Brazil’s space research agency, 5,153 square kilometres (1,989.5 square miles) was cleared in 2023 compared to 10,278 square kilometres (3,968 square miles) a year earlier. The key to this impressive reduction was more – and tighter – inspections and controls by the Brazilian environmental watchdog, Ibama.
Good news for the forests of Brazil, but in other Amazonian countries, the picture is more mixed. In Colombia, deforestation declined an impressive 70 per cent in 2023, whereas in Peru and Ecuador, deforestation is increasing.
Other major rainforests around the world are also still losing trees at far too rapid a rate. The world’s second biggest rainforest, the Congo Basin, is losing five per cent of its forest cover each year. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the picture is more mixed with government institutions claiming deforestation is declining, but data from other sources saying the opposite is, in fact, true. This discrepancy is likely to do with differences in methodology.
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