The National Institute for Space Research of Brazil, which depends on the Ministry of Science and Technology, reported that 1,267 square kilometers of forest were cut down in the last 5 months of 2010. According to the newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo, this represents 85% of the whole area of the city of Sao Paulo. 1,144 square kilometers of forests were cut down in the same period of 2009.
 
The trend of Reducing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which started two years ago, was therefore stopped. Other studies question the results obtained by the satellites and they continue doing research to find out if deforestation actually increased in Brazil over the past year. “Where there is smoke, there is fire, but we will have to wait a little bit more to see if the trend to stop deforestation was reverted”, said the head of Policies to Fight
Deforestation of the Ministry of Environment, Mauro Pires, cited by O Estado do Sao Paulo.
 
The National Institute of Space Research estimates that from August 2009 to August 2010, 6,451 square kilometers of Amazon forest were destroyed. Brazil plans to reduce the deforestation pace of the Amazon forest by 80% by 2020. This is one of the main contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

On February 2nd, the UN officially launched the International Year of Forests in its head office in New York City, USA, to call the attention on the need to manage, preserve and sustain the planet’s forestry resources. At least 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihood.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) regretted that Latin America is still behind in the fight against deforestation, compared with other regions of the world.

EFE news agency reported that the FAO’s Assistant Director-General for Forest Policy, Eduardo Rojas said the forestry surface in South American countries was reduced from 94,000 to 864,000 hectares in the last decade.

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