Monday 24 May 2021 - 9:07am
Logs of wood seized by the Amazon Military Police at the Manacapuru River.
AFP/Ricardo Oliveira
RIO DE JANEIRO - The vast majority of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is illegal, and President Jair Bolsonaro's promise to eliminate it looks doubtful given a lack of transparency on authorised land use, researchers said.
Under pressure to curb the destruction of the Amazon, Bolsonaro vowed last month at a world climate summit to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030.
But almost no deforestation can be considered fully legal in Brazil, given that authorities are failing to adequately implement laws on tracking how much and where land is being cleared under permit, said the report, published by a group of university researchers and experts from environmental organizations including the World Wildlife Fund Brazil and the Centro da Vida Institute.