On Tuesday, monitoring network MapBiomas published a report showing that Brazil lost 1,829,597 hectares of native vegetation in 2023, which means a decrease of 11.6 percent in deforestation compared to 2022.
RELATED:
Brazil: Illegal Deforestation in the Amazon Fell by 63 Percent
Two largest biomes, the Amazon and a tropical savanna known as "Cerrado," accounted for more than 85 percent of the total deforested area in the South American country.
For the first time since MapBiomas began to issue its deforestation alerts in 2019, Cerrado surpassed the Amazon in terms of deforested area. In 2023, Cerrado accounted for 61 percent of deforestation in Brazil while the Amazon accounted for 25 percent.
In Cerrado, 1,110,326 hectares were deforested in 2023, an increase of 68 percent compared to 2022, mainly due to agricultural encroachment, while in the Amazon, deforestation fell by 63 percent in 2023, for a total loss of 454,300 hectares.
The text reads, "Attention: Deforestation in the Atlantic Forest registered a decrease of 27 percent in one year. Lula does work."
While the news of the drop in deforestation is positive, MapBiomas warned that deforestation in Brazil is now concentrated in the Matopiba region, which is located in the northeast states of Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui, and Bahia.
In terms of conservation of natural ecosystems, however, there is still much to do in Brazil. MapBiomas detected that 3,511 out of 5,572 municipalities had at least one deforestation event in 2023.
MapBiomas is a network of non-governmental organizations, universities and technology companies that monitor changes in land use in Brazil through mapping.