Brasilia: According to the Brazilian government data released on Monday, the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has risen to the highest level in 11 years.
CNN reported that the data which included the estimated deforestation rates for nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon was generated by the Satellite Legal Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Project (PRODES).
Brazil is currently being led by President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro who was elected in October 2018, has been criticised for not protecting the Amazon rainforest. The President had rejected a 20 million dollar aid offered during the G7 summit in France to protect the Amazon rainforest.
The rapid rates of severe deforestation are a “direct result of the strategy implemented by Bolsonaro to dismantle the Ministry of Environment,” CNN quoted the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian network of environmental advocacy organizations as saying in a press release.
“The level of deforestation] is far from what we wanted, but it’s also far from the three-digit numbers that had been reported,” Brazilian environment minister Ricardo Sales said.
In August this year, US President Donald Trump had offered assistance to tackle the wildfires which had engulfed the Amazon rainforest.
French President Emmanuel Macron had called the Amazon wildfires an “international crisis” that needed to be on the agenda at the G7 summit in Biarritz.
Bolsonaro had denounced Macron’s offer as “sensationalist” and accused him of using the fires for “political gain.”