AMLO Says Mexico to Probe Deforestation in Flagship Program Bloomberg 3/10/2021 Max de Haldevang (Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday his government would investigate how to improve his flagship environmental program, after a Bloomberg News report showed it had encouraged widespread deforestation. Popular Searches The $3.4 billion Sembrando Vida program, or Sowing Life, pays people in rural areas to plant trees in deforested zones, but may have caused 73,000 hectares of forest coverage loss in 2019, according to a study by the World Resources Institute. Farmers in southeastern Mexico showed Bloomberg News during a recent trip to the region how they had chopped down and burned trees to be able to receive government payments to plant saplings in degraded land.