Destruction of the Amazon slowed, somewhat, under Lula da Silva

Satellite pictures showed an 8.7% reduction in Amazonian deforestation in Brazil in 2025 compared to 2024, with a total of just over 3,800 square kilometres cut down or burned that year, Brazil's INPE or National Institute of Space Research revealed in January. There was a similar, nine per cent year-on-year drop in the destruction rate of the Cerrado, a grasslands region listed as a unique ecosystem, Mexico's La Jornada reported on 9 January, citing INPE. This was the first time deforestation dropped simultaneously in both environmental zones even if the area destroyed "remained twice the size of Sao Paulo," the paper observed. It attributed the decline clearly to policies of the administration led by the socialist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as rainforest destruction peaked at over 10,000 square kilometres in 2022, the last year of the presidency of the rightist Jair Bolsonaro. The Brazilian state most successful in this regard in 2025 was Pará in northern Brazil, which cut deforestation by 36%. The government wants to end Amazonian deforestation entirely by 2030.