The Brazilian savanna continues to shrink. Deforestation in the Cerrado increased by 25% year on year from August 2021 to July 2022, destroying 10,689 km2 of vegetation, the worst figure in seven years, according to official data published on Wednesday.
The deforested area is almost equivalent to that of the Amazon, where deforestation has reached 11,568 km2, according to the PRODES satellite monitoring system of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The Cerrado, where around a hundred indigenous peoples live, in the central region of Brazil, under the Amazon, is one of the richest tropical savannahs in the world in terms of biodiversity.
A recurring increase in the destruction of the Cerrado
Over the previous period analyzed by PRODES, from August 2020 to July 2021, 8,531.44 km2 of savannah had been deforested. “This is the third consecutive year that we have seen an increase in the destruction of the Cerrado, unheard of” since the INPE started using this monitoring system, over the period 2000-2021, denounced WWF-Brazil .
Deforestation in the Cerrado had never been so high since the period from August 2014 to July 2015 (11,100 km2). In addition, during the term of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, which began in January 2019, the Brazilian savannah lost 33,444 km2 of vegetation, an area “at least six times larger than that of the capital Brasilia”, according to WWF.
Environmentalists hope the situation will change with the return to power of President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will begin his third term on January 1 and has pledged to make environmental preservation a priority.