Brazil Reports Record Deforestation Of The Amazon In First Half Of 2022

Brazil, home to two-thirds of the world's largest rainforest, has reported deforestation in record proportions in the first half of 2022.

As per the country's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), over 1,448 square miles of the Amazon, nearly the size of Rhode Island were deforested between January 1 to June 24, CNN reported.

The research unit's satellites recorded new deforestation rates every month this year. In April, a 64 percent spike was reported after 363 square miles of the rainforest were destroyed between January to March, as compared to data collected during the same time in 2021.

This is the largest destruction recorded since the monitoring began in 2016. The area lost is larger than the size of Dallas, Texas.

May and June mark the beginning of the annual burning season in the Amazon. The INPE detected 2,287 fires in the rainforest in May, the highest for the month since 2004. More than 7,500 fires have been recorded since the beginning of this year, which is higher by 17 percent when compared to 2021.

Brazil’s Amazon has lost nearly a fifth of its forest cover—more than 275,000 square miles in the last fifty years. This includes at least 2,300 square miles lost in 2019 alone, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report.

There has been a noted surge in deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil since Jair Bolsonaro was appointed the country's president. Environmental activists have fought back against Bolsonaro's decision to defund government-run environmental protection and monitoring programs.

In 2020, Bolsonaro ordered the creation of the Amazon Council and a task force to aid the development of Brazilian forestry. This was a year after the Brazilian president said he wanted to allow the use of indigenous lands for commercial farming and mining, even in the Amazon. The announcement was met with fierce pushback, according to Reuters.

Last year the federal environmental protection body, Ibama, spent only 41 percent of its $41 million surveillance budget, according to the Climate Observatory NGO.

Researchers have predicted a further increase in deforestation ahead of Brazil's presidential elections scheduled for October.