Brazil Amazon Deforestation Breaks Six-Month Record, Fires Exacerbate Situation
Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest has been subjected to a new six-month deforestation record, while the fires are ravaging the already dying carbon sink
Image: AFP
It isn’t surprising that the deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has reached a record level in the first half of 2022, given that negligent and climate-denying President Jair Bolsonaro has practically pushed the biodiversity of the country toward doom. The country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) revealed that the world’s largest tropical rainforest has lost 1,450-square-mile of forest since January while breaking last year’s six-month record of 1,391-square-mile.
As if that wasn’t enough, the forest has seen the worst June in 15 years with ravaging wildfires. INPE satellites have documented over 2,500 fires in the rainforest last month.
According to Cristiane Mazzetti, from Greenpeace Brazil;
Agribusiness is hitting new records for forest destruction as the dry season arrives in the Amazon. Illegal burnings and deforestation have accelerated over the last three years as a direct result of the Brazilian government’s anti-environmental agenda that encourages the destruction of the forest. If this trend does not change we will approach the tipping point of no return in which the Amazon could fail as a rainforest.
The soaring deforestation rate isn’t helping things either, as the leaves of the chopped trees are acting as fuel for fires in the summer heat. Justifiably, environmentalists and opposition parties are blaming the Bolsonaro administration for implementing policies that profit big businesses by damaging the environment.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Mariana Napolitano, from the Brazilian World Wildlife Fund, said that this negligence will result in increased loss of ecological resilience while impacting the local communities adversely. In his time in the office, Bolsonaro has backed mining and farming activities in protected areas. By offering immunity to gold prospectors, farmers, and logging traffickers, he condemned the rainforest to illegal deforestation.
Given his contribution through ill-thought and fiscally lucrative policies to the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, this carbon sink is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs. Well, the fate of the planet seems bleak if we continue to put our own selfish needs before everything else.
Via: France24
