Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has set himself the goal of 0 deforestation by 2030.
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August was another month of good news for the Amazon rainforest: the rate of deforestation continued to decline significantly.
Earlier this week, Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, announced a 66. 1 percent reduction in deforestation in the Amazon compared to last August. That equates to a loss of about 217 square miles, according to Reuters. These figures come at a time of year when rainforest destruction is generally significant and sticks to a similar trend seen in July.
So far this year, the deforestation rate is 48% lower than in 2022 and has not been recorded since 2018. These figures are a victory for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has made protecting the Amazon a political priority.
“These effects show the determination of the Lula leadership to break the cycle of abandonment and regression observed by the previous government,” Marina Silva said, according to the BBC.
The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, covers about two and a half million square kilometers, an area about twice the length of India. It is a major carbon sink for greenhouse gas emissions and is home to 20 percent of the planet’s new water. But deforestation and climate change are degrading the Amazon and its ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Some scientists fear that if deforestation continues, the rainforest could reach a point beyond which it will no longer be able to regenerate even the grassy savannah.
The tenure of Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, was marked by a rollback of environmental regulations and enforcement, as well as increased deforestation. Since taking office in January, Lula, among other measures, has renewed his efforts to fight illegal land logging and reactivated the $630 million Amazon Fund, earmarked for the government’s efforts to protect the rainforest.
“This shows how important it is for governments to act on climate change,” Erika Berenguer, a senior researcher specializing in the Amazon at Oxford University, said of the figures released this week. Lately he’s running across the rainforest floor and says minimizing the rate of deforestation is a signal to voters.
“Often other people vote and feel powerless,” he said. “This shows how elections can change the fate of the Amazon. “
However, some scientists prefer to track annual deforestation data rather than monthly. “It’s a hopeful story,” said Alexandra Tyukavina, a geographer at the University of Maryland who focuses on tropical forest loss. But he adds that there may be a delay in capturing deforestation through satellite imagery and “there is a lot of deforestation in the second part of the year. “
While the progress made so far has been crucial, Berenguer believes that they are “within reach” that in large part it is about returning to the state in which the country was before Bolsarano. “Then you have to take the fruit from the treetops and that’s it,” he says. “The question is what we will do to further reduce rates from what they were before Bolsonaro. “
Lula’s administration has set itself the goal of not deforesting until 2030. But whether Lula will achieve this goal, or how close he will be to achieving it, remains an open question, and there are at least some reasons to be skeptical. For example, a meeting of Amazon countries earlier this year failed to reach agreement on obstacles to progress, such as deforestation targets and the future of oil and fuel growth in the rainforest.
“We can’t just congratulate ourselves and rejoice in it,” Berenguer said. “We can’t be too comfortable. “
This article was originally published on Grist. Grist is an independent, non-profit media organization committed to telling stories about climate responses and a just future. Learn more about Grist. org.
Tik Root is a senior at Grist.
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