In one year, 13,000 km2 tropical forest have disappeared, a record. The government today says they want to act but its environmental assessment speaks against it.
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The years follow each other and look alike, but for the worse. In Brazil, the deforestation in the Amazon has once again reached record levels. In just one year, more than 13,000 km 2 tropical were shaved over the period from August 2020 to July 2021, according to the data transmitted by the National Institute for Space Research ( INPE). The equivalent of the area of a country like Lebanon; More than 120 times that of a city like Paris
It’s been fifteen years since Brazil had not known such levels of destruction. The number of square kilometers of tropical forest destroys each year almost doubled compared to 2018. And the trend is accelerating: according to INPE, in one year only, deforestation increased by almost 22%.
At the heart of the accusations, we still find Jair Bolsonaro. Run in 2019, the President of Brazil has been illustrated by dismantling the institutions responsible for the protection of the environment. “INPE’s numbers unfortunately have nothing surprising. This president does exactly what he promised during his campaign. He applies his program”, deplore Antonio Oviedo, researcher at the Socioambiental Institute (ISA).
These numbers nevertheless represent a severe camouflet. Isolated since the release of Donald Trump’s power, the Brasilia government is now subject to the intense and conjugate pressure of the United States and the European Union (EU) to reduce the destruction of the Amazon. Jair Bolsonaro, understanding that the winds had changed, promised to give wages.
Change of your
On the government side, finished the speeches on the premium on the end of the indigenous reserves and the exploitation to all crimsons of the forest. “To those who persist in committing these environmental crimes, [we warn] that the Brazilian state will show its full strength in the Amazon,” said Minister of Justice and Public Security, Thursday, Anderson Torres, in a very significant change.
Officially, the government is fighting. Three times, since the beginning of the mandate, the armed forces have been mobilized to extinguish the fires. In June, a new environmental minister has been appointed; In place of the very polemical Ricardo Roars, the most diplomat Joaquim Leite, former secretary of the Amazon and the environmental services within the department.
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