Colombia lost 159,000 hectares of forest cover to deforestation in 2019: Report

Colombia has lost over 100,000 hectares of forest, roughly the size of the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo, due to deforestation in 2019. According to recent official reports, Colombia lost about 159,000 hectares of forest cover last year.

While the figure is staggering in itself, it is actually a viable 19 percent less than the deforestation it experienced the previous year. In 2018, Colombia was reported to have lost 197,000 hectares of forest cover.

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Progress being made, but work still ahead for Colombia

As per reports, the deputy minister for the environment and sustainable development, Maria Claudia Garcia has claimed that Colombia has managed to control and slow down the growing trend of rapid deforestation but there's still a lot of work and reforms that have to be made before the country can declare a victory.

The great Amazon forest spans across multiple countries including Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, with a majority of the forest being located in Brazil. According to reports, the main cause behind deforestation is farming, illegal logging operations, mining, and drug plantations. The UN stated these reasons to be the cause of 154,000 hectares of deforestation in 2019.

Read: Brazil Corporations Urge Action On Illegal Logging In Amazon

Amazon burns in Brazil

While the rate of deforestation in Colombia is steadily dropping, fires in Brazil’s Amazon forest have reached a 13-year high during the month of June after an increase of 20 percent.

Environmentalists on the ground believe that the sudden uptick in forest fires is due to the COVID-19 pandemic because intentional forest fires which are started by loggers and farmers are being less monitored due to COVID-19 restrictions put in place to curb the virus.

Jair Bolsonaro and his far-right government have been blamed for not doing enough to protect the forest but Brazillian leader has always rejected such criticism and has claimed that foreign powers were behaving in a disrespectful manner.

(Image Credit Pixabay)

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