A survey by INPE (Brazil National Institute for Space Research) found that the devastation of the Amazon rainforest biome hit a record for November. In 2019, according to Inpe, there was an increase of almost 104% of the deforested area compared to the previous year.
According to the Deter (Deforestation Detection System in the Legal Amazon in Real Time) there was an increase of 83.9% in forest devastation between January and November 2019 compared to the same period of 2018. In total, during the government From Jair Bolsonaro, the devastation of the forest went from 4,878.7 square kilometers recorded in 2019 to 8,974.31 square kilometers during the current government.
It is good to remember that following the international repercussions of the increase in deforestation reported by Inpe since July, President Jair Bolsonaro accused, without evidence, Inpe of lying about the data and dismissed the then director of the institute, Ricardo Galvão, who rebutted the criticism of the President In the end, the data showed that Galvão was right and that deforestation had really increased a lot in the region. Due to his opposition to the government and his work in defense of science, Galvão was elected by Nature magazine one of the ten most important scientists of 2019.
According to Nature magazine, Galvão "spoke out in defence of INPE scientists. He also accused the president of cowardice and called for a face-to-face meeting — acts that he knew would lead to him losing his job. What he didn’t know was that he would become a hero of sorts, hailed by his scientific colleagues as well as by strangers on the streets. A woman even stopped him on the subway in São Paulo to thank him for standing up to Bolsonaro and helping her to understand why preserving the Amazon matters".
