Trees saved in Brazil and Colombia
The amount of deforestation (when forests are cut down on a large scale) in Brazil and Colombia fell significantly in 2023, figures show.
Brazil and Colombia are both partially covered by the Amazon rainforest, along with other countries including Peru and Ecuador. Nearly 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil. The new data is based on images of Earth collected by a satellite (an object that travels around the Earth in space). It was looking at areas of primary forest – a type of forest that contains a wide variety of living things and stores lots of carbon (which contributes to climate change if released into the air as carbon dioxide).
There was a 36% decrease in the loss of primary forest between 2022 and 2023 in Brazil. For Colombia, the figure was 49%. This means they still lost large chunks of forest but far fewer trees were chopped down than the year before. However, global tree loss increased by 24%. Reasons for this include more deforestation in Laos and forest fires in Canada. Some say the change in Brazil and Colombia is down to new leaders. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) became president of Brazil in 2023, taking over from Jair Bolsonaro, who was criticised for not protecting the environment.
Lula has taken action against people who chop down trees illegally and has granted more protection against deforestation in some areas.
Colombia got a new leader in 2022. President Gustavo Petro introduced several ways to tackle deforestation, including paying local people to stop trees being cut down.