Brazilian Amazon rainforest deforestation has reportedly reached a six-year high, according to the Inpe national space agency.
Between January and June, 3,988 square kilometers (1,540 square miles) of land were cleared in the area.
3,088 square kilometers of the rainforest were decimated in the same time frame last year.
The Amazon absorbs a significant quantity of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and is crucial to the oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles on Earth.
Environmentalists accuse Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, of rolling back environmental regulations of being to blame for the rising levels of deforestation.
Despite failing to acknowledge the increase in deforestation, Brazil’s environment ministry claimed that it has been aggressive in combating environmental crimes.
The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, yet its trees are cut down for their timber and to make room for crops that supply major food corporations.
According to Dr. Manoela Machado from the University of Oxford, the high rate of deforestation is also fueling more fires than usual for this time of year.
According to Dr. Machado, increasing deforestation leads to more fires since clearing land for agriculture frequently involves lighting fires after trees have been felled.
The region is home to people who claim they must use the forest for mining and commercial farming in order to make a livelihood, in addition to being rich in biodiversity.
Native American communities in the Amazon battle to preserve the rainforest and their way of life at the same time.
In March, scientists came to the conclusion that the Amazon rainforest is becoming worse based on more than three decades‘ worth of satellite data.
They claimed that more than 75% of the forest showed evidence of a loss of resilience, with trees taking longer to recover from droughts that were mostly caused by climate change as well as human impacts like deforestation and fires.
More than 100 states made commitments to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 at the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow the previous year.
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