Amazonian deforestation has risen to a 15-year high in Brazil Climate crisis news

The findings of the space research agency come after the Brazilian government pledged to end illegal deforestation at the COP26 climate summit by 2028.

Deforestation year Brazilian Amazon rainforest It rose 22% in one year to its highest level since 2006, according to the government’s annual report, with President Jair Bolsonaro downplaying the guarantee that the country is cutting illegal cuts.

The Brazilian Space Research Agency (INPE) said on Thursday that the country recorded 13,235 square kilometers (5,110 square miles) of deforestation in PRODES satellite data in the world’s largest forest, an area nearly 17 times the size of New York City.

Official deforestation data cover the period from August 2020 to July 2021.

The greater destruction occurs despite Bolsonaro’s efforts to show that his government is serious about protecting the Amazon, which is seen as a critical refuge from climate change disaster.

The former captain of the far-right army still demands more mining and commercial agriculture in protected areas of the jungle.

This month, at the United Nations Climate Summit in Glasgown, COP26, The Brazilian government submitted a commitment End illegal deforestation by 2028, a goal that would require an aggressive annual reduction in destruction.

The INPE report of 27 October showed that deforestation was growing in each of the last four cycles, the first in the data series since at least 2000.

“Note the date in the INPE note. The government went to COP26 knowing the data on deforestation and hid it, ”the Brazilian Climate Observatory wrote on Twitter.

Looking ahead to the summit, the Bolsonaro government released preliminary monthly data indicating a slight decline for the year, as evidence that deforestation was under control. The latest finer data showed a serious picture.

“The numbers are still a challenge for us and we need to be stronger in the face of these crimes,” Environment Minister Joaquim Pereira Leite said at a news conference on Thursday.

He told reporters that the data does not reflect the recent enforcement of illegal deforestation, and acknowledged that the government needs to be more forceful in tackling the destruction.

Mauricio Voivodic, head of Brazil’s environmental group WWF, said the numbers reveal “a real Brazil that the Bolsonaro government is trying to hide with imaginative discourses and efforts to clean up abroad.”

“It’s what reality shows,” he said, “that the Bolsonaro government has accelerated the path of Amazon’s destruction.”