Red alarm level: Amazon rainforest suffers from devastating deforestation!

Red alarm level: Amazon rainforest suffers from devastating deforestation!

Belém, Brasilien - In the past few months, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has achieved alarming proportions. According to Vol.at , the steward rate has increased by 9.1 percent between August 2024 and May 2025. During this time, the area of ​​the rainforest decreased by 960 square kilometers, and the result for the month of May 2025 was the second worst in the history of the records. This happens against the background that the deforestation was further fueled last year by increasing fires.

But there are also bright spots. After a dark year 2023, in which the Deforestation rose dramatically, 2024 showed a positive trend: the stake falls by about 32 percent, which corresponds to an area of ​​1.24 million hectares. This was determined by the “Mapbiomas” initiative, the satellite images examined. In the Amazon area itself, deforestation decreased by around 17 percent, which corresponds to around 378,000 hectares - this is roughly the size of the Spanish island of Mallorca, such as Tagesspiegel reported.

political efforts around the rainforest

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has set the ambitious goal of ending illegal deforestation by 2030. Deforestation had risen sharply under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. The President plans to strengthen the efforts to combat the destruction of the rainforest and has already launched the first measures. The environmental authority Ibama is increasingly imposing fines against environmental offenses. Nevertheless, Brazil remains far from the target of the "zero deforestation", because since 2019, 98,800 square kilometers of forests have been cut down in Brazil, which corresponds to the area of ​​South Korea.

In another positive trend, the deforestation in the damp pantan has decreased by 77 percent, and a decrease of 22 percent was also recorded in the Cerrado savanna area. These developments help hope that the ambitious goals of the Brazilian government can be achieved, such as The global meaning of the Amazon rainforest

The Amazon rainforest extends over nine countries and houses more plant and animal species than any other place on earth. It acts as a significant CO2 memory with billions of trees. Around 20 percent of the total area of ​​the rainforest were destroyed in the last century. The upcoming UN Climate Conference COP30 in November 2025 in Belém, Brazil, marks another important step in the global struggle against climate change and the destruction of the rainforest.