Original article written by: Reuters
According to data from the Brazilian space research organization Inpe, about 9,000 square kilometers (3,475 square miles) of Amazon jungle were destroyed in the 12 months through July, compared with 11,568 square kilometers cleared a year earlier.
Since 2018, the year before Bolsonaro became office, the least amount of land had been cleared. The world's largest rainforest, the Amazon, must be preserved in order to slow down climate change.
"This remarkable outcome solidifies Brazil's reappearance on the climate front," stated Marcio Astrini, the leader of the advocacy organization Climate Observatory.
Nonetheless, the pace of deforestation this year is still far from Lula's promise to achieve zero deforestation by 2030 and is still almost double that of the all-time low in forest destruction in 2012.
After four years of catastrophic destruction under Bolsonaro, who undermined environmental agencies, Lula bet his international image on stopping deforestation upon taking office this year and intensifying the enforcement of environmental regulations.Ranchers, land speculators, and miners caused havoc that reached a 15-year high under the administration of the former right-wing president. The yearly information generated by Inpe's PRODES satellite monitoring program is significantly more precise than the weekly estimates released by its DETER alert system.Because there is less cloud cover in the middle of the year to mask deforestation on satellite photos, the official annual period is calculated from August to July.