Brazil loses 24 trees per second in 2020 as deforestation alerts explode – report

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Expert report points out that satellite warnings of tree fellings increased 30% in 2020; however, IBAMA has inspected virtually none of them.

IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental enforcement agency, has failed to attend to virtually all deforestation alerts by satellites monitoring Brazilian forest areas in recent years, according to data from the MapBiomas Project, a collaborative network of experts in the country, which analyzes these alerts and monitors deforestation, on the rise in Brazil, it points out.

Between mid-2018 and early 2021, only 5% of the deforested area had some degree of intervention from IBAMA (fines or embargoes, for example), a number that corresponded to only 2% of deforestation alerts nationwide. The organization also estimates that 99% of deforestation noted since 2018 have indications or evidence of illegality – no authorization, located in protected areas or in violation of the Forest Code. Last year, deforestation increased 13.6%, leading to an estimated average loss of 3,795 hectares per day, or 24 trees per second.

The data are part of an agency report released Friday, which shows that the number of deforestation alerts exploded in 2020: there were 74,218, a 30% increase over 2019. Deforesters swarmed through 13,853 km2 (1,385,300 hectares), an area 9 times larger than the city of São Paulo.

“On the most critical day, July 31, there were 4,968 hectares deforested, almost 575m2 per second,” reports MapBiomas, created in late 2018 to facilitate the remote surveillance of deforestation in Brazil, based on the processing of alerts issued by 5 satellite monitoring systems.

These tools are part of the arsenal at IBAMA’s disposal. According to MapBiomas data, the Amazon represents almost 61% of the area affected by deforestation, followed by the Cerrado, with 31%, Pantanal, 1.7%, and Pampa, 0.1%. In the Atlantic Forest (1.7% of the area), deforestation has grown substantially, with a 125% increase. In the semi-desert Caatinga (4.4% of the area), at first sight, the increase was significant (405%), but this is due to the fact that the biome gained its own satellite deforestation detection system. Questioned on Friday morning, IBAMA has not yet answered requests for comment.

All federal states registered deforestation alerts in 2020, as did the Federal District. The state of Pará leads the ranking with 33% of the number of alerts and 26.4% of the deforested area in the country. Not surprisingly, it is one of the states where IBAMA had a better performance, covering 8% of the deforested area and 1% of the reported alerts.

According to the report, no IBAMA embargoes or fines were observed between 2019 and 2020 in 9 Brazilian states. “There is no technological, information or budget limit for remote action today in Brazil. In practice, it comes down to political will,” says Tasso Azevedo, the organization’s general coordinator. “But does this mean that deforestation will stop if everyone is fined? No, but we have to reduce the feeling of impunity. To this end, it is necessary to guarantee that deforestation is detected and reported and that those responsible are duly penalized and are unable to benefit from the deforested areas,” he says.

Mato Grosso is in second place in the ranking, with 5% of alerts and 12.9% of the total deforested area. However, the report highlights that the state has “a history of innovation in the creation and implementation of instruments to fight deforestation,” with the best database available for public consultation on deforestation.” In Mato Grosso, 47% of alerts were followed up, such as fines or land embargoes. “Even so, a little more than half had consequences. Ideally, all alerts should have some consequence,” says Azevedo.

In third place is Maranhão, which doubled the deforested area, rising from 6th place in 2019 to 3rd among states with the most deforestation in 2020, with 12% of the deforested area in Brazil.

According to the report, of the total deforestation events, 13.2% intersect with Conservation Units, 7.3% with Indigenous Lands, 0.3% with quilombola territories, 30% with rural settlements, and 68.3% with areas registered in the National Rural Environmental Registration System (SICAR) (68.3%).

“Therefore, in over two-thirds of cases, it is possible to know who is responsible because there is registration,” says Azevedo. SICAR data is not public, so MapBiomas only has access to the registration number and not to the name of the people responsible for the land.

“Ideally, it should be public, like the real estate register,” says the organization’s coordinator. However, he says inspection agencies know who the deforesters are. “The idea is that remote control works in an automatic way, like a traffic ticket. Because the reports come with the image, like the picture of the car when you crossed a red light. The fine and/or land embargo for deforesters should be automatic. But the president of IBAMA himself [Eduardo Fortunato Bim] is not in favor of remote authentification,” he says.

The federal government has decided to focus its efforts against deforestation in 11 cities in the Amazon. In February 2021, the National Amazon Council, whose head is Vice-President General Hamilton Mourão, defined 11 municipalities as priorities for actions of the Amazonia 21/22 Plan, which will replace the Operação Verde Brasil 2 in the inspection and combat of environmental crimes. “We have found that 70% of deforestation, or environmental crimes, occur in 11 municipalities that we have listed as priority areas,” the vice president said at the time. These are Itaituba, Rurópolis, Portel, Pacajá, São Félix do Xingu, Altamira and Novo Progresso in the state of Pará, Apuí and Lábrea (AM), Porto Velho (RO) and Colniza (MT).

According to Mapbiomas, between 210 and 2020, only 3% (616) of the 22,583 alerts detected in these municipalities were fined or embargoed, which represented 12% of the deforested area in these territories. Considering the 52 municipalities prioritized by the Ministry of Environment, only 1,054 (2%) of the 53,750 alerts detected between 2019 and 2020 were fined or embargoed, which represented 9.3% of the deforested area.

“It is impossible to inspect the country other than remotely. There were 74,218 alerts last year, which amounts to about 205 deforestation events per day. In a face-to-face operation it is possible to detect 2 or 3 alerts a day. If we have 10 parallel operations, something that does not happen, there will be 30 detections per day,” says the report’s coordinator, stating that the Federal Prosecutor’s Office has been using data from the Project for Monitoring Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PRODES/INPE) more efficiently, since 2017, to bring public civil actions against those responsible for illegal deforestation of more than 60 hectares.