Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has surged to its highest levels in over a decade with campaigners branding the increase as “beyond belief”.
An area of 11,088 km2 (2.7 million acres) - seven times the size of London - was lost in 2020.
The official data, known as from Brazil’s space research agency Inpe showed a 9.5% annual increase in deforestation on 2019.
The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest and its protection is crucial to stopping catastrophic climate change because of the vast amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs.
But Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has encouraged agriculture and mining activities to boost the economy, arguing it will lift the region out of poverty.
Mr Bolsonaro has also weakened the environmental enforcement agency Ibama. Environmental groups say this has emboldened illegal ranchers, miners and land grabbers to clear the forest.
The official annual measure of deforestation, known as PRODES, is taken by comparing satellite images from the end of July 2020 with those from the beginning of August 2019. It found deforestation at it highest levels since 2008.
“The PRODES figures show that Bolsonaro’s plan worked. They reflect the result of a successful initiative to annihilate the capacity of the Brazilian State and the inspection bodies to take care of our forests and fight crime in the Amazon” the Brazilian non-governmental organization Climate Observatory said in a statement.
But Mr Bolsonaro resisted criticism that deforestation has worsened on his watch, with federal officials hailing the figures as a sign of progress, saying the increase was far lower than the 34% increase recorded in 2019.
Anna Jones, head of forests at Greenpeace UK, said seeing the deforestation rise again was “beyond belief”.
She said supermarkets and food companies were the ones with the power to bring about a change.
“Industrial meat and dairy is the biggest driver of deforestation,” she said. “Yet our supermarkets and fast food chains continue to serve it up to us day after day, knowing that its production is destroying forests, threatening the lives of Indigenous communities, endangering wildlife and worsening climate change.”
European leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron have fiercely criticized Brazil, arguing it is not doing enough to protect the forest.
The election of Joe Biden as US president has raised the possibility that the United States will also ramp up pressure on Brazil over the rainforest.
Biden said the world should offer Brazil money to fund efforts to stop deforestation, and threatened economic consequences against the Latin American nation if it did not.
The comment drew fierce criticism from Mr Bolsonaro, who said it was a threat against Brazil’s sovereignty.
