Government sets up task force to curb deforestation in cerrado

Concern about encroaching deforestation in the cerrado—contrary to what is happening in the Amazon—has mobilized the creation of a federal government task force with seven states plus the Federal District—they hold portions of Brazil’s second largest biome, which occupies a quarter of the country’s territory. The initiative is part of the development of the Action Plan Against Deforestation in the Cerrado, resumed last year.

A meeting at the Planalto presidential palace, coordinated by the president’s Chief of Staff Rui Costa this week, brought together governors from eight states and four ministers, including Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva.

“In the Amazon, the federal government has much greater power to take action. In the cerrado, it’s the states that have greater power,” Minister Silva told journalists after the assembly. “The large turnout of governors is a sign that the problem will be solved, in a pact that involves the federal as well as state governments, the productive sector, society, and the scientific community,” she declared.

In addition to the creation of a task force with the direct participation of the governors themselves, the proposed efforts include merging the states’ databases with those of the federal government.

The idea is to resume the supply of data to the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), weakened though it was under the previous administration, prompting the states to build their own platforms for monitoring the status of rural properties, the federal government reported. In addition to cross-referencing information, a working group of ministers and governors should convene on a regular basis to monitor the data and make decisions.

The source of 40 percent of the country’s fresh water, the cerrado saw a 19 percent surge in deforestation alerts last month compared to February 2023. The biome lost 3,798 km² of native vegetation between August 2023 and February this year, as per figures by the National Institute for Space Research.

The situation is most serious and alarming in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia—an area known by the acronym Matopiba, a combination of the first syllable from the names of each state—which has been identified as the country’s new agricultural frontier. Nearly 75 percent of deforestation in the cerrado occurs in these four states. Of the 52 municipalities responsible for half of all deforestation, 50 are in Matopiba.

During the meeting, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change warned of the impacts of decades of soil degradation through deforestation, not to mention the effects of climate change. It also warned of unprecedented desertification levels near the cerrado.

“We are witnessing a change in rainfall patterns, especially in the Matopiba region, coupled with a lower volume of water in the rivers—some 19 thousand cubic meters per second—as well as other problems that could pose a threat to the economy of family farming and agribusiness,” the minister argued.

The support of the states in the task force, she added, could attract resources from the Amazon Fund to finance initiatives, considering that up to 20 percent of the funding can be put towards monitoring and control measures in other biomes.