Deforestation last year slowed in all of Brazil’s nature biomes for the first time in six years, according to a report issued months before the country hosts a major UN climate conference at the end of this year.
The total area deforested in South America’s biggest country was 32.4 percent lower than in 2023, or about 1.24 million hectares, the report by monitoring agency MapBiomas said yesterday.
It was the second year in a row of lower deforestation, with 2023 also recording a decrease of 11 percent from the previous year.
Photo: Reuters
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to eradicate illegal deforestation by 2030 and wants to make Brazil a leader in combating global warming.
Yet despite the advances, Brazil still lost about 3,403 hectares of native vegetation daily last year.
Brazil is home to six biomes, each with its own climate, vegetation and animal life: the Amazon, the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado, the Caatinga, the Pantanal and the Pampa.
In the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, logging destroyed an average of 1,035 hectares daily, or “about seven trees per second,” the report said, mostly to clear land for agriculture.
The Cerrado, a tropical savanna rich in biodiversity, was the biome most affected by clearing for the second year in a row, losing 652,197 hectares.
Two-thirds of indigenous lands recorded no deforestation last year, the report said.
Deforestation is the intentional destruction of vegetation, and does not include forest fires, which reached record levels in Brazil last year.
COP30, the next round of UN climate talks, are due to take place in the Amazonian city of Belem in November.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a political foundation based on the “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today said during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Both sides of the Strait should plan and build institutionalized and sustainable mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation based on that foundation to make peaceful development across the Strait irreversible, she said. Peace is a shared moral value across the Strait, and both sides should move beyond political confrontation to seek institutionalized solutions to prevent war, she said. Mutually beneficial cross-strait relations are what the
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
RSS