Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon biome plunged by around 31pc over the 12 months ending in July — the sharpest decline in over 15 years — bringing the country closer to meeting its target of eliminating deforestation in the region by 2030.
Brazil lost 6,288km² (2,404mi²) of Amazon rainforest from August 2023-July 2024, a 31pc decline from 9,064km² in August 2022-July 2023, according to the science and technology ministry's national space institute INPE. The fall in deforestation marks the third consecutive decline in deforestation in the Amazon, after devastation in the region reached a multi-year high of 13,038km² in 2020-21.
With the decline, deforestation in the biome reached its lowest level since 2015, when the region recorded losses of 6,207km².
Deforestation fell steeply in all of the largest states in the legally defined Amazon region — known as Legal Amazon — except for Roraima, according to data compiled by the Amazon deforestation satellite monitoring system (Prodes).
The Legal Amazon contains the nine states in the Amazon basin: Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Para, Rondonia, Roraima and Tocantins, as well as most of Mato Grosso and Maranhao states. It contains all of Brazil's Amazon biome, 37pc of the cerrado tropical savanna biome and 40pc of the pantanal biome.
Para state continued to lead in deforestation with 2,362km², accounting for 37.5pc of total deforestation in the biome. But this year's figure was 28pc lower than the 3,299km² in the prior period.
Amazonas state posted the second largest deforestation in the period, with losses reaching 1,143km², accounting for 18pc of the total area of forest lost. Deforestation there fell by 29pc in the 2023-24 cycle from a year earlier.
Mato Grosso, Brazil's largest grain-producing state, cut 1,124km² of forests, down by 45pc from the 2,048km² in the previous cycle.
The government attributed the decline to increased oversight in the region, with the number of fines issued for illegal deforestation nearly doubling from 1 January 2023 — when president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office — and October this year, compared with the period between January 2019-December 2022.
The government also highlighted that deforestation was down in 78pc of the 70 municipalities that were declared priority regions by the administration earlier this year. The government announced R730mn ($129mn) in funding to reduce environmental devastation in these municipalities in April.
The government also reduced deforestation in the cerrado by nearly 26pc to 8,174km² in the period. That is the lowest level since 2019 and the first time deforestation in the biome has declined in four years.
With the reduction in deforestation, Brazil's 2023 emissions fell by 12pc to 2.3bn tons of CO2 equivalent (t CO2e) from 2.6bn t CO2e in 2022, according to Brazilian climate think tank Observatorio do Clima.
