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Amazon Deforestation in Brazil Rose Sharply on Bolsonaro’s Watch
President Jair Bolsonaro has scaled back efforts to fight illegal logging, mining and farming, which have led to widespread destruction in the world’s largest rainforest.
Ernesto Londoño and
RIO DE JANEIRO — The Amazon rainforest in Brazil lost an area about 12 times the size of New York City from August 2018 through July of this year, according to government data released Monday, which shows that deforestation in the biome has shot up significantly since the election of President Jair Bolsonaro.
The 3,769 square miles of forest cover lost during that period represents a 30 percent increase from the previous year and the highest net loss since 2008.
The new deforestation figures, released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, provide the clearest evidence to date that deforestation in the Amazon is on a solidly upward trend on Mr. Bolsonaro’s watch.
Mr. Bolsonaro, who has long argued that conservation policies stymie economic development, has been disdainful of the environmental measures that reduced the Amazon deforestation rate between 2004 and 2012. His government has weakened enforcement of environmental laws by cutting funding and personnel at key government agencies, and it has scaled back efforts to fight illegal logging, mining and ranching.
transcript
The Amazon Is Still Burning. Blame Beef.
Welcome to the lawless heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Here, cattle ranchers and loggers — emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro — are clearing and burning huge swaths of rainforest every day in the name of progress.
It’s moving fast. It’s not just a ground fire. It’s reaching up into the canopy here, too, and just scorching everything. Is this the usual amount of fire that you see? Are you worried about the illicit activity that happens here? Pará, Brazil. Parts of the rainforest in this region have lost so much tree cover it hardly looks like the Amazon. I’m on a highway called the BR-163. In August, this corridor for soy and beef exports lit up like an inferno. Many of the fires were started on protected lands on a single day, a so-called Day of Fire. So, I take the highway here to a protected reserve that saw major burning on that day. It’s called the Jamanxim National Forest. This year, the Jamanxim lost over 45 square miles of tree cover. That’s an area twice the size of Manhattan. It’s the worst deforestation of all protected areas in Brazil. But many people who live here see this as progress. And it has a lot to do with beef. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef. About half of the cattle are raised on pasture that used to be rainforest. And demand is growing. I’m visiting an annual barbecue and auction near the Jamanxim. But it’s not your typical backyard get-together. Some landowners and ranchers here brazenly defy environmental laws. Last year, a government report linked this man, a union leader, to land-grabbing schemes. This woman, head of a national association, was fined for burning 350 acres of rainforest. This man, a local mayor, was caught destroying over 700 acres of virgin rainforest inside the Jamanxim reserve. They all deny wrongdoing. What producers here want is to privatize the reserves, and there’s hostility here towards anyone who tries to stop them. The producers are petitioning an important government official, Nabhan Garcia, appointed by President Bolsonaro to open up the Amazon for development. There’s no question which side Mr. Garcia’s on. He’s a rancher and farmer himself. According to your own government studies, many of the people in some of these protected areas came in after the park was created. They’re in there illegally according to your own government standards right now. Part of the reason we’re here is because of all the fires, right? To be clear, deforesting land without authorization is illegal in Brazil. It’s seized land that’s logged, burned and converted, mostly for grazing. We’re talking millions of acres, billions of dollars and a web of criminal activity. But at the core of the issue is what turns out to be a pretty complicated question. Who does all this land belong to? I catch up with Luiz Helfenstein, who I’d met at the barbecue. His ranch is right at the edge of the Jamanxim National Forest. He considers himself one of the pioneers here. When you started, is this the first settlement that you built? Luiz came here back in the ’80s. He was handed 4,000 acres of rainforest, part of a government plan to develop the Amazon. That’s the BR-163. November 1994. Then the political winds shifted and preservation became the priority. In 2006, the government established the Jamanxim National Forest, taking back most of the land previously given to Luiz and other producers. They felt cheated, and some have responded by grabbing and burning protected land. I take a ride with Agamenon da Silva Menezes. Is this your car? He’s the head of a union for ranchers out here. Was the Day of Fire an example of that disobedience? But satellite data confirms there was an unusual spike in the number of fires on Aug. 10. Local reporters wrote about this so-called Day of Fire, exposing a coordinated plan among ranchers and land-grabbers to burn newly cleared forest. One of those reporters, Adecio Piran, soon found his face on a wanted poster. Did you ever receive death threats or threats to your personal safety? That type of intimidation helps explain how so much criminal activity can go unpunished. Last year, 30 environmental activists were murdered in Brazil. I follow a group of firefighters with one of Brazil’s environmental agencies into a biological reserve. The agency has been attacked by locals and their authority undermined by Bolsonaro’s government. None of the men will speak on the record. So this is what the effort to protect the forest here now looks like: a handful of men carving control lines and putting out brush fires with a leaf blower. It takes a bird’s-eye view to capture the magnitude of what they’re up against. This fire is nearly four miles long. According to Brazilian satellites, more than a soccer field worth of rainforest is cleared every minute. I’m back on the road, driving off federal land, when I see these two trucks. They pull on to the BR-163 highway with loads of fresh logs.
Environmental activists said Monday’s announcement, while not unexpected, was deeply concerning for the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest.
“This figure is the direct result of the strategy implemented by Bolsonaro to dismantle the environment ministry, prevent the enforcement of laws, shelve plans previous governments made to curb deforestation and empower, through rhetoric, those who commit environmental crimes,” Climate Observatory, a Brazilian environmental group, said in a statement.
“In a break with what occurred in previous years during which the rate rose, this time the government did not announce any credible measures to reverse the trend,” it said.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s approach to the environment — and the Amazon in particular — came under sharp scrutiny in August as a rash of forest fires, most attributed to humans clearing land, consumed large swaths of the biome. Facing outrage from European leaders and threats of an international boycott of Brazilian exports, the government deployed the military to help contain the blazes.
But the Bolsonaro administration has continued to weaken the agencies tasked with enforcing environmental laws and regulations. And it maintains that industries such as mining and agriculture should have broader access to protected lands, including Indigenous reserves.
The environment minister, Ricardo Salles, said on Monday that the rise in deforestation had started well before Mr. Bolsonaro’s government came to power in January.
He added that the “unlawful economy” in the Amazon, where illegal logging and mining is rife, was largely to blame. “We need strategies to contain that,” Mr. Salles said during a presentation to journalists. He did not outline a detailed plan to combat the trend.
Experts say the damage unfolding in several Brazilian states is causing irreparable harm to the Amazon. The forest is often called the Earth’s “lungs” for its vast capacity to release oxygen and store carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming. Some experts fear that so much forest will be lost that the area will transform into savanna, which cannot store as much carbon.
“We must remember that the Amazon has been undergoing deforestation for decades,” Oyvind Eggen, the secretary general of the Rainforest Foundation Norway, said in a statement. “We are approaching a potential tipping point, where large parts of the forest will be so damaged that it collapses.”
Gilberto Câmara, the secretariat director of the Group on Earth Observations, a coalition of governments and researchers that share and analyze data to shape public policy, said the growing destruction of the Amazon is doing tremendous damage to Brazil’s image and economic prospects.
“The decision of foreign investors to bring resources to Brazil is increasingly contingent on compliance and rules regarding sustainability,” said Mr. Câmara, a former director of the National Institute for Space Research, the Brazilian agency that tracks deforestation by studying satellite images.
“From the point of view of future generations,” he said, “the loss of biodiversity and the rise of emissions are huge setbacks that will have enormous consequences over the next 10, 15 years and beyond.”
Mr. Bolsonaro and several senior government officials have been dismissive of international criticism over deforestation, arguing that Brazil has done more than many other countries to conserve its forests.
Earlier this year, shortly before the Amazon fires made international headlines, Mr. Bolsonaro said that protecting the environment mattered only to vegans. In August, when Germany said it would devote funds to conservation efforts in Brazil, he suggested that Chancellor Angela Merkel “take that money and use it to reforest Germany” instead.
Ernesto Londoño is the Brazil bureau chief, based in Rio de Janeiro. He was previously an editorial writer and, before joining The Times in 2014, reported for The Washington Post. More about Ernesto Londoño
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