Record decrease in Brazil deforestation in 2024: report
RIO DE JANEIRO: Deforestation slowed in all of Brazil's nature biomes for the first time in six years in 2024, according to a report issued months before the country hosts a major UN climate conference.
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The total area deforested in South America's biggest country was 32.4 percent lower than in 2023, some 1.24 million hectares, the report by monitoring agency MapBiomas said Thursday.
It was the second year in a row of lower deforestation, with 2023 also recording a drop of 11 percent from the previous year.
Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to eradicate illegal deforestation by 2030, and wants to make Brazil a leader in the fight against global warming -- in which carbon-absorbing forests play a key role.
Yet despite the advances, Brazil still lost about 3,403 hectares of native vegetation -- more than 8,000 football fields -- daily in 2024.
Brazil is home to six biomes, each with its own climate, vegetation and animal life: the Amazon, the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado, the Caatinga, the Pantanal, and the Pampa.
In the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, logging destroyed an average of 1,035 hectares daily, or "about seven trees per second," the report said, mostly to clear land for agriculture.
The Cerrado, a tropical savanna rich in biodiversity, was the biome most affected by clearing for the second year in a row, losing 652,197 hectares -- an area similar in size to the megacity of Sao Paulo.
Two-thirds of Indigenous lands recorded no deforestation in 2024, said the report.
Deforestation is the intentional destruction of vegetation, and does not include forest fires, which reached record levels in Brazil last year, fueled by extreme heat and drought worsened by climate change.
COP30, the next round of UN climate talks, are due to take place in the Amazonian city of Belem in November.
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