عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Down by 50% To Five-Year Low in 2023

View of dry wood burning in cultivated field in Baianopolis, western Bahia state, Brazil, taken on September 29, 2023. (AFP)
View of dry wood burning in cultivated field in Baianopolis, western Bahia state, Brazil, taken on September 29, 2023. (AFP)
TT
TT

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Down by 50% To Five-Year Low in 2023

View of dry wood burning in cultivated field in Baianopolis, western Bahia state, Brazil, taken on September 29, 2023. (AFP)
View of dry wood burning in cultivated field in Baianopolis, western Bahia state, Brazil, taken on September 29, 2023. (AFP)

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest in 2023 halved from the previous year to its lowest level since 2018, government data showed on Friday, a major win for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in his first year in office.

Lula has staked his international reputation on reducing deforestation in the South American country, with pledges to end illegal clearing by 2030. Under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, destruction accelerated in the world's largest rainforest.

According to preliminary satellite data from space research agency INPE, 5,153 square kilometers (1,989.6 square miles) of the Amazon were cleared in 2023, a 49.9% drop from 2022.

That is still an area more than six times the size of New York City, underscoring the challenges faced by Lula to fulfill his promise, but the lowest since 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took office.

In December alone, INPE data showed, deforestation dropped 23% year-on-year to 176.8 square kilometers.

Brazil's Environment Ministry said the positive figures came on the back of "decisive" inspection efforts by environment watchdog Ibama, stressing that the number of notices of infraction issued by the agency rose 106% in the period.

"This is the first step towards achieving the goal of zero deforestation by 2030," the ministry said in a statement on social media.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
TT
TT

China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)

For a third day, extreme rainfall pounded the southern Chinese province of Hainan, known as China's "Hawaii", amid the transit of yet another tropical cyclone, leaving the island half-submerged in a year of record-breaking wet weather.

Cities in Hainan including Sanya, famed for its palm trees, seafront hotels and sandy beaches, remained waterlogged on Tuesday due to Tropical Storm Trami to the south. On Monday, Sanya logged 294.9mm (11.6 inches) of rainfall over a 24-hour window, the most for any day in October since 2000.

Trami made landfall in central Vietnam on Sunday after a slow trek across the South China Sea from the Philippines, where it left at least 125 people dead and 28 missing. While Hainan did not take a direct hit from Trami, Chinese authorities took no chances, recalling all fishing vessels and evacuating over 50,000 people.

China's entire eastern coastline has been tested by extreme weather events this year - from the violent passage of Super Typhoon Yagi across Hainan in September to the strongest tropical cyclone to strike Shanghai since 1949. Scientists warn more intense weather is in the offing, spurred by climate change.

"In October, the national average precipitation was 6.3% higher than the same period in previous years," Jia Xiaolong, a senior official at the National Climate Centre, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Last week, the water along China's Bohai Sea inexplicably rose up to 160 cm (5.2 feet) in a matter of hours despite the absence of any wind, leading to a tidal surge that flooded the streets of Tianjin and many cities in the northern provinces of Hebei and Liaoning.

"It's hard to imagine how much power was needed to push such a large area of sea water to one place," Fu Cifu, an official at the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre, told state-run Xinhua news agency at the time.

China is historically no stranger to floods, but its prevention infrastructure and emergency response planning are coming under increasing pressure as record rains flood populous cities, ravage crops and disrupt local economies.

Amid disaster recovery efforts this summer, authorities had to provide billions of dollars in additional funding to support reconstruction in multiple regions from the south to the northeast of China.

In July, the country suffered 76.9 billion yuan ($10.8 billion) in economic losses from natural disasters, with 88% of those losses caused by heavy rains and floods from Typhoon Gaemi, the most for the month of July since 2021.