Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a report published Wednesday that will be seen as good news for leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. South America's biggest country lost 985,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of native vegetation last year, down 20.6 percent from 2024, the MapBiomas monitoring network announced. The figure is the lowest since the network began keeping records in 2019, AFP reported. It notably does not include forest lost to fires, but after a record fire season in 2024, the country was relatively spared major infernos last year. Lula, who is seeking a fourth term in October elections, has made the fight against deforestation a central tenet of his administration. Preserving forest cover is essential to fighting climate warming as trees act as a natural carbon sink. After four years of widespread logging under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, Lula has pledged to eradicate illegal deforestation altogether by 2030. The reduction in deforestation was noted across Brazil's six major ecosystems. "We are seeing an increase in enforcement actions and sanctions (...) which have a direct correlation with the drop in deforestation in all Brazilian biomes," Marcos Rosa, MapBiomas's technical coordinator, told AFP. Even so, the rate of destruction remains breathtaking. In the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, where deforestation slowed by 23.5 percent, five trees are still felled every second. The hardest-hit biome last year was once again the Cerrado, a vast, biodiverse savanna south of the Amazon. It alone accounted for more than half of the deforestation. MapBiomas -- a consortium of universities, NGOs and technology companies -- said agriculture accounted for 99 percent of vegetation loss. Lula is keen to showcase his environmental achievements ahead of the election. Last year, he hosted the COP30 climate summit in the Amazonian city of Belem. He has however been criticized by environmentalists for his support of a massive oil exploration project near the mouth of the Amazon River.
