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Brazil fires drive acceleration in Amazon deforestation: Report
A record fire season in Brazil last year caused the rate of deforestation to accelerate, in a blow to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's pledge to protect the Amazon rainforest, official figures have showed.
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Illegal burning of the Amazon rainforest near the city of Humaitá, in the northern Brazilian state Amazonas, on September 4, 2024. Forest fires have been raging for several weeks in Brazil, particularly in the Amazon rainforest in the north and the immense Pantanal wetland in the center-west of the country. (AFP/Michael Dantas)
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record fire season in Brazil last year caused the rate of deforestation to accelerate, in a blow to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's pledge to protect the Amazon rainforest, official figures have showed.
The figures released on Friday by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which tracks forest cover by satellite, indicated that the deforestation rate between August 2024 and May 2025 rose by 9.1 percent compared to the same period in 2023-2024.
And they showed a staggering 92-percent increase in Amazon deforestation in May, compared to the year-ago period.
That development risks erasing the gains made by Brazil in 2024, when deforestation slowed in all of its ecological biomes for the first time in six years.
The report showed that beyond the Amazon, the picture was less alarming in other biomes across Brazil, host of this year's UN climate change conference.
In the Pantanal wetlands, for instance, deforestation between August 2024 and May 2025 fell by 77 percent compared to the same period in 2023-2024.
Presenting the findings, the environment ministry's executive secretary Joao Paulo Capobianco chiefly blamed the record number of fires that swept Brazil and other South American countries last year, whipped up by a severe drought.
Many of the fires were started to clear land for crops or cattle and then raged out of control.
