Afskovningen af Amazonas-regnskoven i Brasilien er taget til med 28 procent i året frem til august 2013, oplyser regeringen i Brasilia fredag. Stigningen kommer efter et årtis nedgang i ødelæggelserne og myndighederne vil nu arbejde for at sætte en stopper for “denne forbrydelse”, som miljøministeren kalder det.
Ifølge de foreløbige oversigter drejer det sig konkret om et område på 5.843 kvadratkilometer, som er faldet for ulovlig skovhugst eller afbrænding med henblik på at indvinde ny agerjord.
Miljøaktivister siger, at det skyldes en kontroversiel ændring af Brasiliens lov om skovbeskyttelse. Den nye lov fra i fjor indskrænkede de beskyttede områder og gav samtidig amnesti for afskovning, som havde fundet sted før 2008.
Nevertheless, Brazil last year reported the lowest rate of deforestation in the Amazon since monitoring began, BBC online writes Friday.
The reform, a long-standing demand of the country’s farmers’ lobby, known as the ruralists, was passed after several vetoes by President Dilma Rousseff.
“If you sleep with the ruralist lobby, you wake up with deforestation,” Amazon expert Paulo Adario from Greenpeace said.
Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said that around 4.000 criminal actions have been taken against deforesters in the past year.
Ms Teixeira said she would set up a meeting with local governors and mayors of the worst hit areas to discuss strategies to revert the trend.
The majority of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions, believed to be one of the main causes of global warming, stem from deforestation.
The Brazilian government made a commitment in 2009 to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 80 per cent by the year 2020, in relation to the average between 1996 and 2005.
Brazil showed the best improvement of any country, cutting its deforestation rate in half in the period 2000-2012, from approximately 40.000 sq km per year (næsten som Danmarks areal) to approximately 20.000 sq km per year.
The Earth lost 2,3 million sq km of tree cover in 2000-12, because of logging, fire, disease or storms. But the planet also gained 800.000 sq km of new forest, meaning a net loss of 1,5 million sq km – an area the size of Mongolia.
