The Amazon is no longer Brazil’s deforestation hotspot

Deforestation alerts in the Amazon rainforest registered an annual decline of 7.4 percent in the 12 months through July, according to satellite data released Thursday by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe). 

This July, alerts were down 66 percent compared to July 2022, the highest drop ever recorded and the second-lowest total area of deforestation alerts for that month since 2015.

But while deforestation rates in the Amazon dropped to a four-year low, they reached a new high in the Cerrado savanna, up 16 percent from August 2021 to July 2022. According to the satellite monitoring platform MapBiomas, Brazil’s Cerrado has lost more than 20 percent of its native vegetation since the 1980s.

Agribusiness, Brazil’s economic engine, is the country’s main driver of deforestation — whether the land is cleared for pasture or crops. The sector has yet to address how indirect suppliers often fail to comply with environmental regulations.

Deforestation in the Cerrado is steepest in the so-called “Matopiba” region, Brazil’s new agricultural frontier. A portmanteau...