September 15, 2021

10:09

Iury Lima – from Cenarium

VILHENA (RO) – Pará is the state in the Legal Amazon frequently listed in deforestation rankings and accumulated in the period between August 2019 and July 2020, about 50,139 thousand hectares taken by logging. The 55% of devastation occurred without authorization from environmental agencies, therefore, illegally.

The devastated perimeter is almost half the size of Belém, the state capital. With this, 27,595 hectares were cut down without the law, resulting in an increase of 20% compared to the previous period, between 2018 and 2019, when illegal logging reached 38% of the total exploited, with 22,906 hectares.

The data are from mapping done with satellite images by researchers from four institutions focused on environmental conservation: the Institute of Man and Environment of the Amazon (Imazon), the Institute for Conservation and Sustainable Development of the Amazon (Idesam), the Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora) and the Institute Center for Life (ICV). Together they make up the Timber Harvesting Monitoring System (Simex) network.

Transparency

The network is the same one that mapped the entire territory of the Legal Amazon and is now launching detailed studies on each Federation Unit that is part of the largest tropical forest in the world. In the case of Pará, the transparency of the information through data on timber extraction, provided by the state government and environmental control agencies, facilitated the composition of the mapping.

The researcher from the Man and Environment of the Amazon Institute, Dalton Cardoso, explained details about the data that also made it possible to differentiate the areas where wood was explored in an unauthorized manner from those where management was carried out. Pará and Mato Grosso were the only states that provided this information.

“In Pará, it was only possible because we were able to access information and official data from management plans and other documents from other institutions, too. With this, we crossed with satellite data and verified, in fact, the consistency of these authorizations to be able to separate what is authorized from what is not authorized [to cut down] in the state”, he said.

A tenth of all degradation

“Today, Pará manages to do this as well as the State of Mato Grosso, so I would place them as the two good examples of States that have an interesting level of transparency to allow an analysis of this type”, the researcher pointed out.

While more than half of the logging occurred illegally last year in Pará, the other 45% was identified in places where the activity was allowed, equivalent to 22,544 hectares.

Pará concentrates 10.8% of the total area exploited by timber extraction, whether legal or illegal. The State still occupies the fourth position among the other members of the Legal Amazon, losing only to Rondônia, Amazonas and Mato Grosso.

Adding up all the States (with the exception of Maranhão and Tocantins), the Amazon forest lost almost 500 thousand soccer fields in the same period, from August 2019 to July 2020.

Places most affected

The southeast of Pará is the most illegally exploited region of the state, where from 2019 to 2020, there were 15,349 hectares, or 56% of all unauthorized extraction of raw material in the state’s territory.

In addition, the municipalities of Paragominas, Juruti and Goianésia do Pará were listed as those most taken by unauthorized extraction:

Paragominas: 8,073 hectares (29%);
Juruti: 3,954 hectares (14%), and 
Goianésia do Pará: 3,271 (12%)

“This region is critical because it has an old logging zone and we can still observe intense activity in this area. This is due to the expansion of roads and even the existence of remaining forest stocks”, evaluated Dalton Cardoso.

Fiscal activity

The territorial intelligence coordinator of the Center of Life Institute (ICV), Vinicius Silgueiro, believes that it is necessary to intensify fiscal activity, even where extraction is allowed. “It is necessary to direct inspection efforts to the enterprises and wood processing industries in critical cities, which are already known through the monitoring carried out”, said Silgueiro.

Among the land holding categories, most of the illegal logging occurred on registered rural properties, which corresponded to 64.2% or 17,726 hectares. The remaining 5,434 hectares (19.7%) were within rural settlements.

In the cartographic voids, there were 2,635 hectares (8.7%) taken by the criminal practice. In undesignated lands, 1,858 hectares (6.8%). “This illegal logging causes a series of environmental damages, such as the reduction of wood stocks, forest degradation, which causes the loss of biodiversity, and the emission of greenhouse gases, which ends up aggravating the climate crisis even more”, warned Vinicius Silgueiro.

Reduction

The mapping also identified that illegal logging still occurred within the limits of one of the Indigenous Lands (TIs) of Pará: the Baú TI, of the Kayapó people, where the felling of trees was equivalent to an area of 158 soccer fields all together. Despite being significant, the indicator represents an advance: there was a reduction in unauthorized activity within protected lands, especially on the territories of native people.

Detailed studies

Like Pará, the other states in the Amazon will also gain detailed mapping, even in the face of the difficulty of access to data encountered by researchers at state agencies and environment departments in most of their territories.

“We believe that this information is super important not only to have a diagnosis of the forest – considering other disturbances as well, such as deforestation and forest degradation itself -, but also to contribute to more qualified debates, besides providing subsidies for the elaboration of public policies that combat unauthorized activity and the promotion of forest management in the region”, detailed the Imazon researcher.

“[Illegal logging] ends up demotivating sustainable management. Besides that, it generally does not respect some aspects recommended in forest management, such as respect for communities and traditional people, the use of techniques that maintain and respect the sustainability of the forest and its biodiversity. In addition, if the unauthorized logging activity occurs intensely or recurrently in the same area, this can cause forest degradation and, with this, be an open path to deforestation”, concluded Cardoso.