According to INPE satellite data, Brazil has lost 3,750 square kilometers (1,448 square miles) of the world's largest rainforest, the largest area since 2016. When the laboratory started this kind of monitoring. The
INPE satellite has set a new monthly deforestation record since the beginning of this year, recording a record 2,562 fires in the country's Amazon last month.
May and June indicate that the Amazon begins significant burning and deforestation each year due to the dry season.
In May, INPE detected 2,287 fires in the rainforest. This is the highest number for the month since 2004.
Since the inauguration of President Jair Bolsonaro, the destruction of the world's largest rainforest has skyrocketed. He argued that 2019 and weakening environmental protection would impede economic development that could reduce poverty in the Amazon region.
The President has passed several presidential orders and laws to protect the rainforest, but at the same time cuts funding for government-run environmental protection and surveillance programs and commercializes indigenous lands. Promoted openness to traditional agriculture and mining.
In October 2021, a group of climate lawyers requested the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Bolsonaro on suspicion of an attack on the Amazon.
However, the Brazilian president opposed international critics for better protection of the rainforest.
At the beginning of May, Bolsonaro blamed Leonardo DiCaprio, and after talking about Amazon's environmental importance, the actor said it was better to "keep his mouth closed."
Some scientists predict that deforestation will continue to increase prior to Brazil's October presidential election, as it has done in advance of the last three elections.
According to Carlos Souza Jr., a researcher at Imazon, a Brazilian research institute, environmental enforcement may weaken during regular elections and criminals may rush deforestation prior to the new government's inauguration. there is.
