The Amazon Rainforest’s Deforestation in Brazil Falls to Five-Year Low
It was announced by the Brazil environment minister, Marina Silva, that the tree loss was down by 20 percent from that of the previous year. Brazil has the largest share of the Amazon and shows a sign of making remarkable progress on its behalf to stop all the deforestation by the end of this decade.
It was reported that 3,500 square miles had been cut between the months of august-2022 and July-2023, which was a 22.3 percent decrease from this same period a year before. This decline has positively impacted Brazil’s environment by reducing the greenhouse gases by 7.5 percent. Additionally, this shows the power of a reduction in deforestation in reducing the greenhouse emissions — even in countries such as Brazil which, by some measures, is the 6th largest emitter in the world.
“Behind this was a political decision,” Silva said on Thursday at a news conference. “We are changing the image of the country when we change this reality.”
This announcement by Silva is encouraging as it shows signs that the local policies could change the direction of global forest loss. The results were announced almost a year after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January. He said in his October 2022 victory speech that Brazil was “ready to resume its leading role in the fight against the climate crisis.”
It is not only Brazil that is making changes to their policies regarding deforestation. Columbia, a nation that houses ten percent of the Amazon rainforest, announced that their deforestation rates have fallen by almost 70 percent in just the first 9 months of the year. This proves that the goal to eliminate deforestation by the end of the decade is not too far fetched if these countries continue to strive to fight this phenomenon as they are.
Source: The New York Times. “Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Falls to a Five-Year Low”. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/climate/amazon-deforestation.html. 01/11/2023. [Date of access: 29/12/2023]
