Deforestation down 21.9% in Amazon, 9.2% in pantanal in one year
New data from satellite monitoring project Prodes show a 21.8 percent drop in deforestation in the Amazon, 19.5 percent in the biome’s non-forest area, and 9.2 percent in the pantanal. The figures compare August 2022 through July 2023 with the twelve months prior.
In the pantanal, deforestation in the same time span totaled 723 km², most of which in Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul state, where 52.8 percent of the native vegetation was destroyed.
Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva said the numbers come as a result of the importance given to multisector policy by the government, which mobilized the president’s chief of staff’s office as well as 19 ministries. “This synergy brings states, municipalities, and everyone else onto the agenda. But this is a policy that must be maintained,” she argued.
The data also reveal a sharper decline across the 70 priority municipalities for combating deforestation in the Amazon—42 percent. These are said to concentrate 75 percent of the deforestation of native vegetation in 2022.
The figures update the annual deforestation rate in the Amazon to 9,064 km². Deforestation alerts were also reported to go down 55% from August 2023 to April 2024 compared to the same period immediately before it.
Expanded monitoring
For the first time, the data cast light on the non-forested area of the Amazon—a previously unmonitored area of nearly 28 thousand km². The report reveals the destruction of 584.9 km² of this section of the biome, which is also home to endemic species and is twice the size of the pantanal.
