Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest broke the monthly record for October, destroying 904 square kilometers (350 square miles), official figures showed on Friday.
The grim news comes less than two months before far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s four-year term ends.
The former army captain is a climate change skeptic and has been heavily criticized for his policies, which are seen as promoting deforestation.
The DETER satellite observation system has detected a three percent increase in the deforested area of ??the world’s largest tropical rainforest compared to October 2021, which is a record for that month, according to the space research institute INPE.
The newly deforested section covers an area a little over half the size of Sao Paulo.
With two months to go, 2022 is already the worst year for Amazon deforestation since DETER began monitoring in 2015.
However, far higher deforestation numbers were recorded in the early 2000s.
So far this year, almost 9,500 square kilometers have been destroyed, compared to the total of 9,200 square kilometers deforested in 2021.
The Brazilian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said deforestation and wildfires have “exploded” since last month’s presidential election, in which Bolsonaro was defeated by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Lula, who was also president from 2003 to 2010, has pledged to eliminate deforestation.
“The increase in deforestation (in October) was expected, but nevertheless the figures for the first days of November are frightening, they show an unbridled race for destruction,” said the WWF before the change of government on January 1.
Under Bolsonaro, average annual deforestation increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.
Lula confirmed on Thursday that he will be attending the COP27 climate summit in Egypt next week.
“The new government will have its hands full repairing the situation and ending the perception that the Amazon is a lawless country,” WWF expert Raul do Valle said in a statement.
However, Bolsonaro’s environmental policy “will continue to cause damage for some time,” said Andre Freitas of Greenpeace in Brazil.
