Many agricultural and mining projects have been facilitated on protected lands and indigenous reserves. (File)
Rio de Janeiro:
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased 25% year-on-year in the first half of 2020, according to official data released Friday.
Some 3,069 square kilometers (1,184 square miles) have been affected by deforestation, the highest figure since data was collected from 2015, said the country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) .
The month of June, which marks the start of the dry season and the fires, also hit a record with 1,034 square kilometers of deforestation, an increase of almost 11%.
Brazil has been criticized by a number of countries and environmental groups for large-scale deforestation and the fires that ravage the world‘s largest rainforest during the dry season.
Vice President Hamilton Mourao said that international investors wanted Brazil to show “results” in the fight against Amazonian deforestation before considering participating in environmental protection projects in the country.
President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic, has facilitated agricultural and mining projects on protected lands and indigenous reserves.
“It is not true that we are destroying the jungle to produce food,” he said, also denying that Brazil was dismantling the state’s environmental protection structure.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
