The Brazilian Amazon is said to have lost 10,267 kilometers of rainforest in 2022, the worst record in the historical series of Deter, the Real-Time Deforestation Detection system of the state-run National Institute of Space Research (INPE), the agency reported yesterday.
Last year, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest increased by 24.9 percent over 2021, when 8,219 square kilometers were lost and surpassed the 2019 record of 9,178 square kilometers.
In December, 218 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest were lost, the third worst December on record, just behind 2017 and 2015, representing a 150 percent increase compared to December 2021.
The deforestation in the Amazon increased in the last months of the year, coinciding with the end of the mandate of Jair Bolsonaro, defeated in late October at the polls by Lula da Silva.
The INPE reported that 4,793 square kilometers of the Amazon were lost between August and December, a record for the period.
Lula da Silva’s new Brazilian government has already announced that preserving the Amazon and the environment will be two of its priorities.