Fire driven by the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon grew in the last twelve months, according to official data released Thursday that show a 4% increase between August 2024 and July 2025.
This result reverses the sharp fall registered in 2024 and anticipates the trend of the next annual deforestation rate, whose consolidated figure will be published in November, shortly before Brazil welcomes the COP30 climate conference in the Amazon city of Belém.
By counting only July, deforestation fell 20% compared to the same month of 2024.
The devastation in the largest tropical jungle on the planet reached 4,495 square kilometers in the last twelve months, an area three times greater than the megalopolis of Sao Paulo, according to the figures of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE).
Despite the increase of 4%, it is the second lowest deforesting surface in a year of the historical series, initiated in 2015 and always takes as a reference the period between August and July of the following year.
The Minister of Environment, Marina Silva, said when presenting the data that “what promoted (the increase) were the fires”, which explained 15% of the deforestation in the Amazon, the greatest proportion since the beginning of the series.
The Government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva associates the growth of fires, often initiated by human action, to the historical drought that Brazil suffered in 2024.
Deforestation without accounting fires was reduced 8% in the last twelve months, a reason to “celebrate”, according to Silva.
“Deforestation in the Amazon is stabilized, but our commitment is zero deforestation by 2030 in Brazil,” said the minister.
The environmental climate observatory network indicated that if “the extreme drought and the burned area record last year”, the deforested surface in the last twelve months “cannot be considered bad news.”
In Amazonian lands, “hoarders and degraders have a new ally, climate change, and use fires as a deforestation tool,” warned the Executive Secretary of the Environment, Joao Paulo Capobianco.
In the Pantanal and Closed Biomes, the largest wetland and the most biodiverse savannah in the world, deforestation was reduced 72% and 21% respectively. For the closed one, it was the first fall since 2021.
Lula will head in November the Cop30 of the United Nations.
The leftist president must decide before Friday, if partially or totally or totally vetoed a debated law of environmental licenses approved in July by Congress.
