In May, 739 km² of Amazon rainforest were destroyed — double the figure from two years ago. Yet Brazil's environment minister wants to revise the satellite monitoring system.
Even before Jair Bolsonaro officially assumed the role of Brazil's new president, many international observers were already drawing attention to the fate of the Amazon. The conditions of the planet's green lung were too fragile, despite the conservation and reforestation projects launched in recent years. And the ties between the far-right ex-military man and agribusiness were too obvious to ignore, further underscored by his decision to strip the Ministry of the Environment of its oversight of forests and waterways.
It could almost have seemed like an excess of caution, driven by mistrust of a politician who had swept aside his rivals precisely because of his divisive and provocative character. A few months on, however, the data arrived. And they unfortunately confirm the worst fears.
The figures come from the Brazilian government's own official source: the Amazon forest monitoring system managed by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe). In May, the agency reveals, just over 739 square kilometres of rainforest were lost to deforestation. In 2018 that figure was considerably lower (550 square kilometres), and two years ago it was practically half (363.3 square kilometres).
"If this upward curve were to continue, it would be a bad year for the Amazon rainforest," confirms Claudio Almeida, who coordinates the satellite monitoring programme. "Everything depends on how much surveillance there will be over the next two months, which are crucial." These figures should be read with a degree of caution, since they refer to a single month — but, as the Guardian points out, May is an important indicator, as it marks the start of the dry season, when the majority of fires and other deforestation activity occurs.
A new satellite analysis reported by the agency Reuters confirms that the situation is literally spiralling out of control. Over the past two months, on average, an area of forest the size of a football pitch has been destroyed every minute. Reuters journalists managed to make contact with an environmental inspector who, speaking anonymously, levelled damning accusations at their country's government. "They don't want to let us speak because we would tell the truth — that protected areas are being invaded and destroyed."
"The government cannot deny the numbers coming from its own agency. The question now is: what will it do about it?" says Carlos Souza, a researcher at the NGO Imazon. Yet, on the eve of the data's publication, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles had directed sharp criticism at Inpe. The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, on the basis of his statements, even raised the possibility that monitoring could be outsourced to a private company. The anonymous source contacted by Reuters echoes this suspicion: "The government is trying to show that the data are wrong, that the numbers do not reflect reality."
Salles poured cold water on the controversy in an interview with Reuters: the intention is not to get rid of Inpe, but to open a public tender to find another provider that would add a further monitoring system. "We want a system that provides real-time imagery, so we can direct enforcement operations more precisely and make them more effective," he promised.
For now, experts are waiting to see whether these preliminary figures, detected using the Deter system, will be confirmed by the Prodes programme, which is more precise and therefore used as the official benchmark. Its most recent update shows that, in the period from June 2017 to June 2018, 7,900 square kilometres of forest were razed to the ground — roughly equivalent to the territory of Puerto Rico.
As an in-depth piece in Prospect, translated into Italian by Internazionale, points out, a certain section of unscrupulous agribusiness regards the Amazon as nothing more nor less than a vast tract of land to be exploited for its own ends. The region already hosts the bulk of soya cultivation (Brazil is the world's leading producer, with 96 million tonnes in 2016) and cattle farming (which over the past twenty years has grown from 37 to 85 million head, generating a turnover of 6.5 billion dollars). If profits of this magnitude are already at stake under existing protections, it does not take much imagination to see who would benefit if the law's constraints were loosened.
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However, "clearing the land does not only mean felling the large trees that are essential to the ecosystem," reads the article by Julia Blunck. "The vegetation and everything it shelters is set alight, impoverishing the soil. This practice not only accelerates the process of desertification, but also shortens the lifespan of the land. And in turn it triggers new fires and forces farmers to move on in search of more fertile ground."
