Anna Júlia Lopes and Karina Custódio*
The state of Pará accounted for 36% of the reduction in deforestation in the Amazon between 2022 and 2024, according to a technical note released by IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) on Friday (5), Amazon Day. In first place on the list, the state is followed by Amazonas, which accounted for 30% of the reduction in the biome over the same period.
In addition to Pará and Amazonas, Rondônia, Mato Grosso and Acre also contributed to the fall in deforestation in the biome, with 17%, 11% and 9% respectively. The document states that, when analyzing the profile of the reduction or increase in deforestation in the different land categories, it is possible to identify the “crucial” role of Protected Areas and Unallocated Public Lands in reducing deforestation.
According to Rafaella Silvestrini, a researcher at IPAM and one of the authors of the technical note, the reason for the drop in deforestation rates in these regions would be the increase in inspection in the last two years – an increase that was due to a previous rise in deforestation in these areas.
“Inspections are generally directed towards the region that had previously seen the most deforestation – precisely in order to be more effective. It’s a region that goes from Acre and Amazonas to Pará, which is called the ‘new arc of deforestation’,” explains Silvestrini.
Roraima, Maranhão and Amapá, on the other hand, are the Federative Units that showed an increase in the rate of deforestation, according to the note. In the opinion of Ane Alencar, IPAM’s Science Director, a probable cause for this increase would be forest fires in the region, especially from 2023 to 2024 – a period in which the Amazon faced one of the most severe droughts ever recorded.
“The increase in deforestation in Amapá and Maranhão occurred mainly within protected areas, such as Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands. In Roraima, a large part of the increase [in deforestation] occurred in private areas, especially rural properties. This increase may be related to fire,” says Alencar. However, although the director mentions that fires are the most likely cause for the advance of destruction in the forest, there are still no definitive answers, highlighting the need to continue studies into the deforestation process in the region.
Falling deforestation on the roads
One of the data points that stands out in the document prepared by IPAM researchers is the fact that the reduction in deforestation from 2022 to 2024 showed a “concentrated geographical distribution”, mainly along the main highways in the Amazon – a region that historically tends to concentrate deforestation.
Even Unallocated Public Lands – one of the land categories cited by the technical note as fundamental to the fall in deforestation – saw a greater reduction along highways. Transamazônica (BR-020), Cuiabá-Santarém (BR-163) and Porto Velho-Manaus (BR-319) are some of the roads analyzed in the study.
In the south of Amazonas, near the junction of the BR-230 (TransAmazônica) and BR-319 highways, a “significant reduction” was also identified, especially around the municipalities of Lábrea, Canutama, Humaitá, Apuí and Manicoré. In Pará, the southwest of the state also saw a drop in deforestation along the BR-163 highway, near the towns of Novo Progresso and Castelo dos Sonhos; and in the Transamazon region, in towns such as Pacajá and Anapu.
Silvestrini says that, in these cases, the reduction was probably also due to enforcement. In the researcher’s opinion, the fact that the presence of highways provides easy access to the regions is as much a factor for deforestation as it is for anti-deforestation enforcement.
“For the agents to inspect, they need to get there by car, so these are the easily accessible places – and they are also the most deforested places, precisely because they are easily accessible. So much so that these places are the most deforested, and when the inspection takes place, that’s where the biggest reduction happens,” he says.
Pará still leads deforestation
Although Pará is the state that showed the greatest reduction in deforested areas when compared to the other Federative Units that also have the presence of the Amazon biome in their territories, it continued to lead deforestation in 2024.
From 2022 to 2024, Pará stood out as having the greatest absolute reduction in the period, 2,273 km², with a decrease of 50%. However, even with the drop, the state that will host COP30 (30th United Nations Conference on Climate Change) in November still accounts for 37% of the total deforestation in the Amazon biome (a total of 2,255 km²). According to the note, Pará is followed by Mato Grosso and Amazonas, which accounted for 21% and 18% of the total deforestation in the biome, respectively.
“One factor that counts for a lot is that both Pará and Amazonas are the two largest states and the ones with relatively recent deforestation compared to, for example, Mato Grosso, where deforestation began more years ago,” says Silvestrini. She explains that, given the size of Pará and Amazonas, there is still “a lot of forest”, and therefore a lot of area to be cleared compared to other states that have already cleared their forest area.
According to the researcher, the assessment of the case of Pará must look at the history of the region: previously, access to the forests located in Pará was difficult and, because of the highways, it became easier to allow deforestation to advance.
The researcher points out that, currently, the focus of deforestation is in the central-southern region of the state, while the northern region is “relatively protected”. Silvestrini says that the part from the center to the south and the so-called “Terra do Meio” are the ones that are in the arc of deforestation – and that, consequently, today they are also the most heavily policed areas.
“As long as there is forest, people will deforest. That’s why these enforcement measures are so important, to at least ensure that deforestation is only legal – where it can be cleared. It would be a less serious problem than the one we have today,” says the researcher.
How the research was carried out
The analysis determined deforestation by land category and by state based on data from PRODES (Project for Monitoring Deforestation in the Legal Amazon by Satellite), which gathers consolidated information on deforestation until July 2024. The period considered represents the gross area deforested annually between August of the previous year and July of the following year, and not the annual rate of deforestation.
The geographic information used corresponds only to the Amazon biome, disregarding the Cerrado and Pantanal portions present in states of the Legal Amazon.
Image credit: Vinícius Mendonça/Ibama
*IPAM journalists, anna.rodrigues@ipam.org.br and karina.sousa@ipam.org.br