Deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado region, a vast tropical savanna renowned for its rich biodiversity, increased sharply in 2023 and overtook that of the Amazon, according to a report published Tuesday.
In the Cerrado, which extends through central Brazil and into neighboring Paraguay and Bolivia, more than 1.11 million hectares (2.74 million acres) were destroyed in 2023, an increase of 68 percent compared to the previous year, said the report by research group MapBiomas.
These losses represent almost two thirds of the deforestation suffered by all of Brazil and about 2.4 times the destruction recorded in the Amazon, the report said.
“The face of deforestation is changing in Brazil, concentrating in biomes dominated by savannas and grasslands, and decreasing in jungle areas,” said MapBiomas coordinator Tasso Azevedo.
But in all cases, “almost all deforestation in the country (97 percent) is driven by agricultural expansion,” stressed MapBiomas, a collective of NGOs and Brazilian universities.
More than 93 percent of the destruction “presented at least one indication of illegality” or irregularity, according to data from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute.