Amazon: deforestation alert grows and mobilizes government

The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has pointed out a trend of increasing deforestation in the Amazon, based on alerts from the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (Deter), available on the TerraBrasilis platform. According to the data presented this Thursday 8, the month of April saw a 55% increase in forest suppression alerts, compared to April 2024. Although the accumulated data between August of last year and April of this year indicate a 5% drop in deforestation in the Amazon , the increase recorded in the last month is mobilizing federal government authorities.

“We are identifying a possible reversal in the deforestation decline curve. And April is noteworthy because it was a significant increase in relation to the series we had been seeing. So, [there was] a meeting of the interministerial committee [for controlling and combating deforestation] to learn these numbers in detail and to convene all the agencies so that, in the next few days (we have about two weeks, as we agreed), we can organize and readjust the measures, identifying the main hotspots where this occurred, where they are concentrated, what the main drivers are and making adjustments to keep deforestation falling,” said the executive secretary of the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MMA), João Paulo Capobianco , in an interview with the press. “The goal is to reach July 31 with deforestation falling in relation to the previous year,” he added.

According to INPE, most of the recent deforestation alerts occurred in areas of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Pará. Before this spike, the decline in deforestation between January and April of this year had already been slowing down, falling by just 1%. Compared to the accumulated figures for recent years, the decline in deforestation between 2024 and 2022 is 45.7%. “Our commitment is to have a consistent and lasting decline in deforestation,” highlighted Minister Marina Silva , emphasizing the involvement of 19 ministries in coordinating efforts to monitor the increase in deforestation over the coming weeks.

“We don’t want to wait until the annual rate is a little higher in deforestation to be able to reassess and see what needs to be done the following year. Since we have this tool, which allows us to identify trends, we have identified that we still have a positive balance, which has stabilized over the last four months and had a small peak in April. It could be just a peak that reverses the following month, but it may not be,” noted André Lima, the extraordinary secretary for Deforestation Control and Territorial Environmental Planning at the MMA.

Cerrado and Pantanal

In the Cerrado, INPE also identified an increase in deforestation alerts in April, 26% compared to the same month last year. From August last year to April this year, the situation is a consistent drop, around 25%. The official deforestation rate in the Cerrado last year fell by 25.7%, the first drop in five years.

In the Pantanal, Deter recorded a 77% drop in deforestation alerts in April, with no fire outbreaks recorded.

New plans

After the meeting of the Permanent Interministerial Commission for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation, Minister Marina Silva also announced the approval of the plans for the prevention and control of deforestation in the Atlantic Forest and the Pampa, which are the two plans that were missing. The other biomes in the country already have their plans in place.

Alert system

According to technicians from INPE and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA), DETER conducts a rapid survey of alerts for evidence of changes in vegetation cover in the Amazon and Cerrado. This survey is considered the main instrument for monitoring and controlling deforestation and forest degradation, carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) and other environmental agencies.

Despite this, the platform is not intended to accurately measure deforested areas, which is done by the Legal Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Project (Prodes), prepared by Inpe annually, between August of one year and July of the following year, including the driest periods of the two monitored biomes.