São Paulo

For Ricardo Salles, minister of the Environment, Brazil already achieved zero deforestation—at least from a relative point of view. Recent official data—relative to the 2017-2018 period—shows that Brazil experienced the most extensive destruction of the biome in the last decade.

"We are looking for absolute zero or relative zero? The relative zero we have already reached," Salles told Folha on Thursday (4).

The minister was preparing to attend a Semeia Institute event on the concession of national parks.

Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli - REUTERS

On Wednesday night (3), Salles said, in an interview with Central Globo News, that deforestation in the Amazon represented 0.002% of the biome. Today, said the actual number is 0.16%.

"When I commented from 0.2 it is to have a distinction and perspective of what we are talking about in terms of the volume of deforestation; we already have deforestation that in whole numbers is zero, it's 0.2 illegal deforestation," he said.

The annual deforestation that the minister is talking about, however, is equivalent to an area greater than the size of the Federal District. The deforestation rate between August 2017 and July 2018 was 7,536 km².

"How many Federal Districts fit in the Amazon?" He countered. "What we need to do is to take the measures that are appropriate to reduce illegal deforestation further, but this improvement, in our opinion, is an improvement in resource management," he said.

According to Mauricio Voivodic, executive director of WWF-Brasil, the minister's mathematics does not make sense. "It's a huge area, pretending that the problem does not exist, it's the first sign that you do not want to fight the problem, it's playing with data to pretend the problem does not exist."

Translated by Kiratiana Freelon

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