'Football pitch' sized area of Amazon forest lost every minute, satellite data reveals

The Amazon rainforest has seen a spike in tree clearances since the start of the year.
Alzenir Ferreira de Souza

An area of Amazon rainforest roughly the size of a football pitch is being cleared every minute, satellite data has shown.

The largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon provides 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen and is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming.

But the rate of land losses has accelerated as Brazil's right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro favours development over conservation, rolling back protections over the land.

Brazil is the South American country which owns most of the rainforest.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has claimed environmental protections hinder Brazil’s economic growth.
AFP/Getty Images

Satellite images show a sharp increase in tree clearances in the region over the first half of 2019, following Mr Bolsonaro’s appointment on January 1, the BBC has reported.

The past two months have seen the most staggering scale of losses, according to the most recent analyses, with an average of around one hectare being cleared every minute.

The predominant reason for felling trees is to create new pastures for cattle, official figures show.

Mr Bolsonaro swept to power on a populist agenda backed by agricultural businesses.

Many farmers believe too much of the Amazon region is protected and that environment staff have too much influence.

The president has said he wants to weaken the laws protecting the forest and dedicate more land to boosting agriculture.

In a speech in May, Mr Bolsonaro also announced he would remove environmental protections in a part of the forested coast south of Rio de Janeiro in order to create holiday area which he referred to as “a Cancún of Brazil”.

Former Brazilian environment ministers have warned that the new government was systematically trying to destroy Brazil’s environmental protection policies.

“We are watching them deconstruct everything we’ve put together,” ex environment minister José Sarney Filhounder, who served under President Michel Temer, told the Guardian.

“We’re talking about biodiversity, life, forests… the Amazon has an incredibly important role in global warming. It’s the world’s air conditioner; it regulates rain for the entire continent.”

The rainforest holds a vast amount of carbon in its billions of trees, accumulated over thousands of years.

Its leaves also absorb a large amount of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be left in the atmosphere adding to the rise in global temperatures.

By one recent estimate, the trees of the Amazon rainforest absorbed in carbon dioxide equivalent to the fossil fuel emissions of most of the nine countries that own or border the forest between 1980-2010, according to the BBC.

The forest is also the richest home to biodiversity on the planet, a habitat for around one-tenth of all species of plants and animals.

It is also home to one million indigenous people.

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