On Monday, the Institute of Man and the Environment in the Amazon (IMAZON) published a study showing that illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was reduced to 196 square kilometers in January and February.
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This figure represents a drop of 63 percent of the deforested area with respect to the area destroyed in the same period last year.
In the first two months of 2023, at least 523 square kilometers were destroyed in nine Amazonian states, which concentrate around 70 percent of the planet's tropical rainforest.
According to IMAZON, which has been measuring deforestation since 2008 with the help of satellite images, these are the lowest rates of illegal logging recorded in the Brazilian Amazon since 2018.
However, this NGO pointed out that the 2024 figure is still higher than the rates of illegal logging in the first two months of 2016 and 2017 when 52 and 69 square kilometers of forests disappeared, respectively.
Therefore, researcher Larissa Amorim said that deforestation rates are still high and represent a "major challenge" for the administration of President Lula da Silva, who set the goal of achieving a "zero" illegal deforestation rate by 2030.
To achieve this goal, one of the government's priorities should be to expedite the process of demarcating Indigenous lands and creating new environmental reserves, she said, adding that these territories have the lowest deforestation rates.
IMAZON acknowledged Lula's efforts to restore environmental oversight mechanisms since taking office in 2023. Surveillance of the Amazon and Indigenous lands demarcation have been gradually resumed since then after these policies were abandoned by the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).