Brazil lost 16,557 km2 – or 1,655,782 hectares – of native vegetation cover in all its biomes last year: a 20% increase over 2020. With the upward trend in desmate in the last three years, in this period Brazil lost the equivalent of almost a State of Rio de Janeiro of native vegetation.

This is what shows the latest edition of the Annual Report on Deforestation in Brazil (RAD), mapBiomas, collaborative network of NGOs, universities and startups. According to the study, the average deforestation speed in the country also increased from 0.16 hectares/day for each deforestation event detected and validated in 2020 to 0.18 hectares/day in 2021. With a daily average of 191 new events, the deforestation area per day in 2021 was 4,536 hectares – or 189 hectares per hour.

In the Amazon alone, 111.6 hectares were deforested per hour or 1.9 hectares per minute, which is equivalent to about 18 trees per second. The biome alone concentrated 59% of the deforested area in 2021.

The MapBiomas report refined and validated 69,796 deforestation alerts in 2021 nationwide, individually assessed each deforestation event by crossing with data from protected areas, permits and rural environmental registry (CAR) and found evidence of irregularities in more than 98% of cases. Only in 1.34% of alerts (corresponding to 0.87% of the total deforested) no evidence or evidence of irregularity was found.  In at least 75% of deforestation it is possible to find a responsible, according to the network.

"To solve the problem of illegality, it is necessary to attack impunity. The risk of being penalized and held responsible for the illegal destruction of native vegetation needs to be real and properly perceived by environmental offenders," explains Tasso Azevedo, mapbiomas coordinator. "For this, it is necessary to act on three fronts, ensuring that all deforestation is detected and reported, that all illegal deforestation receives action of accountability and punishment of offenders and that the offender does not benefit from the illegally deforested area, receiving some kind of penalty," he says.

A novelty Annual Report on Deforestation in Brazil this year is the identification of deforestation pressure vectors, such as agriculture, mining, mining, urban sprawl and others, such as pressure for the construction of wind and solar power plants, mainly in the Northeast region. The figures show the prevalence and stability in the level of agricultural pressure in the last three years, when the activity was responsible for deforestation percentages above 97%.

In this scenario, the state of Pará differs in some areas where mining was an expressive pressure vector. In areas close to capitals and large urban centers, the pressure was due to urban expansion.

The report is the third in a series of Mapbiomas that aims to consolidate and analyze information on all deforestation detected in the six Brazilian biomes. It was released on Monday (18), at 10:30, on webinar on YouTube.

Amazon concentrated 59% of the deforested area in 2021

The figures leave no doubt that the Amazon has been the great front for the suppression of native vegetation in Brazil in the last three years. Data show that this biome concentrated 59% of the deforested area and 66.8% of deforestation alerts in 2021. More than 977,000 hectares of native vegetation were destroyed last year: an increase of almost 15% compared to the 851,000 hectares deforested in 2020, which, in turn, had already represented an increase of 10% compared to 771,000 hectares of desmate in 2019.

Secondly, comes the Cerrado, with just over half a million hectares (30%), followed by the Caatinga, with more than 116,000 hectares (7%). Even with less than 29% of its forest cover, 30,155 hectares were deforested in the Atlantic Forest – 1.8% of the alert area. Despite being responsible for the smaller alert area (0.1% of the total), Pampa almost doubled the deforested amount (92.1%). In the Pantanal, there was an increase of 50.5% in the detected alerts and 15.7% in the deforested area between 2020 and 2021.

Together, The Amazon and Cerrado accounted for 89.2% of the deforested area detected in 2021. When the Caatinga was added, the three biomes accounted for 96.2% of the losses. The largest increases, in relation to the deforested area in 2020, occurred in the Amazon (126,680 ha) and cerrado (83,981 ha), while in proportional terms, they occurred in the Caatinga (88.9%) and Pampa (92.1%).

Source: Um só Planeta