 Colombia lost forest area the size of Sao Paulo in 2019: report Bogota (AFP) July 9, 2020 - Colombia lost 159,000 hectares of forest -- an area the size of Brazilian megacity Sao Paulo -- to deforestation in 2019, according to an official report presented on Thursday. Although considerable, it represents a 19 percent reduction in deforestation compared to the 197,000 hectares destroyed in 2018. In 2017, that figure was 219,000. "We've managed to control a growing trend of deforestation," said Maria Claudia Garcia, the deputy minister for the environment and sustainable development. "The results are promising but this isn't a triumphalist message." Yolanda Gonzalez, director of the state Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), said it was "good news." Some 62 percent of the deforestation was in the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest that spans across Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The loss of forest was worst in departments blighted by armed criminal groups. However, IDEAM's forests system coordinator Edersson Cabrera pointed to the "significant slowdown" in the Amazon region, which accounted for 70 percent of the country's deforestation in 2018. The main causes of loss of forests are an increase in farmland, illegal logging and mining, and drug plantations, which according to the United Nations accounted for 154,000 hectares in 2019. Colombia, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, has committed to reducing deforestation in the Amazon to zero in 2020, although experts doubt it can realistically achieve that target.
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International investors want Brazil to show "results" in fighting Amazon deforestation before they will consider participating in environmental protection projects in the country, Vice President Hamilton Mourao said Thursday after speaking with the funds.
"At no time did investors commit with resources, they want to see results... to do with the reduction in deforestation," Mourao, who heads the National Amazon Council, told reporters.
At the end of June, investment funds from Europe, Asia and South America that collectively administer close to $4 trillion in assets wrote an open letter to the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, urging the end of projects that threaten to accelerate the destruction of the world's largest rainforest.
And this week, 40 Brazilian and foreign businesspeople told Mourao they were concerned about the impact of Brazil's environmental policies on the country's image.
Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic, has facilitated farming and mining projects on protected land and indigenous reserves.
Mourao said the government was the target of "unjust" criticisms.
"It's not true that we're destroying the jungle to produce food," he said, also denying that Brazil was dismantling the state's environmental protection structure.
Brazilian prosecutors have called for the dismissal of the environment minister, alleging he contributed to increased deforestation and fires in the Amazon by removing measures designed to protect the rainforest.
Recent data showed the Brazilian Amazon suffered its worst month of May for deforestation since records began in 2015.
Almost 3,000 square kilometers (1,150 square miles) of tropical rainforest were lost, some 20 percent more than in May 2019.
There's also been a marked increase in forest fires, just as the dry season begins.
Mourao was joined in the meeting by the ministers of foreign relations, environment and agriculture and the Central Bank president.
The ministers announced that next week the government will publish a decree prohibiting for 120 days the use of fire for agricultural purposes in the rainforest.
"Protection and preservation won't happen without development, they're aspects that need to go together," said Mourao.
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