Brazil’s share of the world’s largest rainforest lost 218.4 square kilometers (84.3 square miles) of forest last month, according to the National Space Agency’s DETER monitoring program.
The area is up more than 150 percent from the 87.2 square kilometers (33.7 square miles) destroyed in December 2021, according to agency INPE.
Even after Luis Inacio Lula da Silva succeeded Bolsonaro as president on January 1, figures suggest that the Amazon is not safe. Earlier, Bolsonaro’s failures to protect the Amazon had sparked international protests. Bolsonaro has been widely blamed for the fires in the Amazon and cuts to Amazon conservation.
Under Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75.5 percent over the previous decade.
Now Bolsonaro’s office has released the figures to indicate that despite Bolsonaro’s change, destruction in the Amazon continues and that he is not the cause of the destruction. According to Bolsonaro, deforestation increased by 150 percent in December compared to the previous year.
But “Bolsonaro’s government may be over, but his disastrous environmental legacy will still be felt for a long time,” Marzio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement.
It was the third-worst December on record for the eight-year-old DETER program, behind 2017 and 2015.
Deforestation in 2022 was at or near record highs during the critical dry season of August, September and October. Due to the dry weather, light and fire often rise.
Experts say the destruction is mainly caused by farms and land grabbers clearing forests for cattle and crops.
President Lula, who previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010 to bring about a sharp decline in deforestation, has made it clear that he will reboot Brazil’s environmental protection programs and fight deforestation.