Bolsonaro blames countries buying Brazilian timber for Amazon deforestation

Undercutting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's pledge at the COP26 summit, deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has surged to a 15-year high.

Questioning the proportion of the released data, Bolsonaro said,"Is there illegal deforestation? Yes, and it would be easy if other countries would not buy our timber."

According to a government's 2021 report that raises worries with environmentalists, deforestation has soared 22 per centin a year.

The Brazilian Amazon lost 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest in the 12-month reference period from August 2020 to July 2021, as per the National Institute for Space Research’s Prodes monitoring system.

Cristiane Mazzetti, spokesperson for the Amazon at Greenpeace Brazil said "It's a fact that the current government has dramatically raised the level of environmental destruction in the largest forest on the planet.''

''If we compare the more than 13 thousand square kilometres registered in 2021 with the 2018 rate before Bolsonaro we can see an increase of about 75 percent in deforestation."

"This situation could get worse if proposals to change the legislation that are currently being discussed in the National Congress are approved," said the Greenpeace spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups, said “It is a shame. It is a crime.”

“We are seeing the Amazon rainforest being destroyed by a government which made environmental destruction its public policy.”

The Brazilian Amazon had notrecorded a single year with more than 10,000 square kilometers of deforestation in over a decade before Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency term started.

(With inputs from agencies)