Deforestation in the
Brazilian Amazon broke the monthly record for
September, according to official figures released Friday, triggering calls from
environmentalists to vote far-right President Jair Bolsonaro out of office
later this month.
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In the latest worrying news on the rainforest, satellite monitoring showed
1,455 square kilometers (562 square miles) of forest cover was destroyed in the
Brazilian Amazon last month, according to national space agency INPE's
real-time surveillance program, DETER.
The area is equivalent to 25 times the size of Manhattan, and the worst for
September since the program was launched in 2015.
The previous record for September was also under Bolsonaro: 1,454 square kilometers
in 2019.
The figures came as Bolsonaro battles to win re-election in an October 30
runoff against leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), who
has vowed to work to achieve net-zero deforestation.
Lula -- who also faced criticism at times for his environmental record as
president -- won Sunday's first-round election with 48 percent of the vote, to
43 percent for Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro, an ally of the powerful agribusiness sector, has faced
international criticism for presiding over a surge of destruction in Brazil's
60-percent share of the world's biggest rainforest, a key buffer against global
warming.
Since he took office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the
Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent from the previous decade.
Experts say the agribusiness industry is driving the destruction by
clear-cutting and burning forest to turn it to farmland and pasture.
With three months to go, 2022 is already the second-worst year on record for
deforestation, at 8,590 square kilometers, according to DETER.
That is second only to 2019, Bolsonaro's first year in office, when 9,178
square kilometers were destroyed. The second- and third-worst years were also
under Bolsonaro -- 2020 and 2021, respectively.
"Anyone who cares about the future of the rainforest, the lives of
indigenous peoples and the possibility of having a livable planet should vote
to remove Bolsonaro," Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of the
Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement.
Bolsonaro's campaign defends his record as "balancing environmental
protection with fair and sustainable economic growth."
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