A report released by the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon) on September 16 alerts to record deforestation in the Amazon region between January and August 2022. According to the document, the accumulated deforestation in the Amazon reached almost 8 thousand km² of forest in just eight months and is already the highest in the last 15 years. In the month of August alone, 1,415 km² were cut down, an area four times the size of Belo Horizonte, the state capital of Minas Gerais.

According to Imazon, another problem was forest degradation caused by timber extraction and fires, which grew 54 times in the region, if compared to the same period last year. The degraded area went from 18 km² in August 2021 to 976 km² in August 2022, an increase of 5,322%.

The report warns that, besides directly threatening the lives of traditional peoples and communities and causing losses in biodiversity, this increase in destruction also affects the ozone layer and contributes to global warming at a time of climate emergency. The release of the new data on deforestation and fires in the Amazon took place on the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.

The importance of keep the forest standing

The Imazon document points out the importance of looking at the standing forest as one of the solutions to protect populations from the consequences of climate imbalance, such as the greater frequency and intensity of extreme events like droughts and storms.

"We are already halfway through the year and what has been happening are recurrent negative records of devastation of the Amazon, with an increase in deforestation and forest degradation. And unfortunately we have seen insufficient actions to combat this problem", laments researcher Bianca Santos, from Imazon.

Imazon classifies as deforestation when the vegetation was totally removed, the so-called "clear cutting", and as forest degradation when part of the forest was removed because of timber extraction or affected by fire. Therefore, says the Institute, it is common for an area classified as degraded to be subsequently deforested. 

"In many cases of areas that suffer forest degradation due to logging, after the total removal of the species of commercial value, the trees are completely removed in order to destine that area to other types of use, such as farming and cattle raising or even for real estate speculation, in the case of illegal occupation," explains researcher Bianca Santos. "If the environmental agencies act to protect recently degraded areas, they can prevent them from being deforested in the following months," adds the researcher.

Pará is the leader in deforestation and Mato Grosso in degradation

Although the area destroyed in the Amazon in August this year was 12% less than in the same month in 2021, when 1,606 km² were deforested, the Imazon researcher warns that it is too early to celebrate. This is because the devastation in 2022 was the third worst for the month of August since 2008, when the institute implemented its Deforestation Alert System (SAD). The second worst year was 2020, when 1,499 km² of forest were cut down.

The states that deforested the most in August were Pará (647 km²), Amazonas (289 km²) and Acre (173 km²), which registered respectively 46%, 20% and 12% of all the deforestation in the Amazon.

"In these three states, as well as in the others that make up the region, we are identifying the advance of deforestation in public forests that are not destined. These are areas belonging to the state or federal governments that have not yet had a defined use, whose priority established by law is for the creation of new protected areas, such as indigenous or quilombola lands and conservation units. However, due to this lack of destination, these lands end up being the favorite of land grabbers, who invade them with the expectation of obtaining possession", says the researcher.

The state with the largest area of degraded forest in August was Mato Grosso (657 km²), which represents 67% of that registered for the whole of the Amazon. Pará (240 km²) and Acre (28 km²) came second and third, with respectively 25% and 3% of the degraded areas in the region.