Deforestation highs are Bolsonaro hangover, experts say

On the environmental front, the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva government took office with a bang. It quickly set about undoing the policies of the previous administration of anti-environmentalist President Jair Bolsonaro, and promised zero illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. 

Despite this, early deforestation results have been less than flattering during the government’s first 100 days in office. But environment experts say Lula’s predecessor is still to blame.

In February, the 322 square kilometers of deforestation in the so-called Legal Amazon was 38 percent higher than the same period in 2022, and massively outstripped all previous February results since Brazil’s Deter real-time satellites began measuring forest loss in 2015. In March, deforestation saw a 12 percent increase over 2022.

“Environmental protection institutions are still getting back on their feet after four years of the Bolsonaro government,” notes Natalie Unterstell, head of the Talanoa Institute, a climate policy think tank. “They’re short on staff, they’re short on all kinds of resources,” she tells The Brazilian Report.

Renato Agostinho, president of Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama, told the news website Metrópoles about the agency’s rebuilding challenges, noting that it plans to reopen the crucial Humaitá and Tabatinga oversight bases in Amazonas state — but it has no clear idea of when it will be able to do so.

The Tabatinga base was a key facility for monitoring the remote Vale do Javari region in the western Amazon, where British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were murdered in mid-2022. Mr. Bolsonaro ordered the closure of the base in 2019.

Experts say that while the new administration has laid out an uncompromising stance on illegal deforestation,...