In 2022, Brazil experienced deforestation spanning 20,576 square kilometers of its natural habitat, a distressing increase of 22.3% compared to the previous year.
This area equates to the total landmass of nations like Israel or Slovenia, reveals a report by MapBiomas, a scientific consortium.
Every day of the past year saw, on average, the devastation of 56.4 square kilometers of forests, savannahs, or rural vegetation in Brazil, a size comparable to Bermuda, according to the data by MapBiomas.
The consortium, which comprises NGOs, universities, and tech firms, utilizes satellite images to assess land use.
MapBiomas’ 2022 Annual Deforestation Report comprehensively accounted for the ecological degradation across Brazil.
The report analyzed 76,193 locations where satellites detected the loss of vegetation cover across all the country’s ecosystems, such as the Amazon, the Cerrado (savannah), and the Pantanal.
In the four years since MapBiomas began its annual deforestation reports, Brazil has lost roughly 66,000 square kilometers of vegetation, which is analogous to the size of Lithuania or Sri Lanka.
By 2021, Brazil had already witnessed the destruction of 16,824 square kilometers of greenery, a 20% surge from the destruction in 2020.
The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, faced the most extensive devastation last year, with 11,926 square kilometers demolished.
This area, equivalent to the size of Qatar, accounted for 58% of all deforestation in Brazil. MapBiomas’ estimates suggest that an average of 21 trees per second were lost in the Brazilian Amazon last year.
Among the most impacted ecosystems in 2022 was the Cerrado, losing 6,597 square kilometers of vegetation (32.1% of the total), and the semi-arid region of Caatinga, experiencing a loss of 1,406 square kilometers (6.8%).
Despite being Brazil’s most decimated ecosystem, with a 71% loss of vegetation, the Atlantic Forest saw a slight respite, with only an additional 100 km being cleared last year (1.5% of the total).
It was the only ecosystem to record a decrease in deforestation, while the other five, including the Pantanal and the Pampas, reported increases.
According to MapBiomas, areas featuring jungle vegetation bore the brunt of deforestation last year (64.9% of the total), followed by savanna vegetation (31.3%) and rural vegetation (3.6%).
Indigenous Lands remained the most preserved areas, with deforestation amounting to just 1.4% of the total area destroyed in the country last year.
The report asserts that clearing land for agriculture contributed to a staggering 95.7% of all deforestation recorded in Brazil in 2022, a major food producer and exporter globally and a leading supplier of products like meat and soybeans.
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