Around 26% of deforestation in rural properties in Brazil occurred in a permanent preservation area or on properties with legal reserveconsidering data collected since 2008. Brazil has, on average, 95 million hectares that require restoration actions and payment for environmental services.
A CNN had early access to the survey prepared by the Remote Sensing Center (CSR) of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), which shows that around 74 million hectares are areas with a surplus of native vegetation preserved in legal reserves, while approximately 21 million hectares are hectares need recovery.
The study, named “Panorama of the Forest Code”, evaluated the requirements of the Forest Code, revealing the compliance of the more than seven million rural properties registered in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR). These records are essential for control, monitoring, environmental and economic planning, and for combating deforestation in accordance with Law No. 12,651/2012.
The states with the highest rate of deforestation are Rondônia, Acre, Pará, Roraima and Amazonas, all in the Legal Amazon, a region that worries scientists due to the increase in CAR records overlapping with public lands without specific destination.
“In 2024, after 12 years of reviewing the Forest Code, almost nothing has progressed, especially regarding the use of the CAR as the main instrument for compliance with the Forest Code. This period has been marked by setbacks and limitations. The legislative change relaxed requirements related to environmental conservation and made inspection measures more flexible, including granting amnesty to illegal deforesters, massive cancellation of infraction notices and reducing the need to recover native vegetation”, reveals Britaldo Soares Filho, coordinator of the study .
Problems with Overlapping Records
The study warned about the alarming growth of records overlapping with other land categories, especially undesignated public lands. In the Legal Amazon, overlaps increased from 12.4% to 18.3% in the last year. Pará leads the ranking of overlapping records, followed by Rondônia, Amazonas, Roraima and Tocantins.
Researchers associate these overlaps with CAR inefficiency and misuse of the system, resulting in fraudulent declarations that often hide illegal deforestation, legal reserve deficits or land grabbing.
