Deforestation in Brazil last year increased by over 22 percent in 2022 from the preceding year and totaled 20,576 square kilometres, according to a survey cited by the Portuguese language news agency Lusa.
The area is almost equivalent to the size of Israel and represents the loss of more than 56 square kilometres of vegetation each day, the 2022 MapBiomas Annual Deforestation Report says.
The MapBiomas reports have been published for the last four years and during that time, Brazil has lost a total of 66,000 square kilometres of vegetal cover – roughly the size of Sri Lanka.
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The greatest loss last year was experienced in the Amazon ecosystem, which saw 11,926 square kilometres of deforestation – an average of 21 trees every second or 58 percent of all vegetation lost in the country.
Significant deforestation also took place in Cerrado, which lost nearly 6,600 square kilometres of tree cover or more than 32 percent of the total.
Logging to make way for agriculture was responsible for almost all of the deforestation recorded last year in Brazil, which is a major global producer of meat and soy.
