The MATOPIBA region concentrates the country's deforestation, due to pressure from agribusiness, and the state of Maranhão leads the ranking.
The launch of the Annual Deforestation Report in Brazil, the RAD 2024According to MapBiomas Alerta, attention is drawn to the continued leadership of the region known as MATOPIBA (Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia), a frontier of agricultural expansion in Brazil, in the suppression of native vegetation in biomes, particularly the Cerrado.
For the second consecutive year, and despite a 41% reduction compared to 2023, the Cerrado remains the biome with the largest deforested area among all biomes, accounting for more than half of the country's total deforested area (52,5%), totaling 652.197 hectares. According to the report, agriculture is the main driver of deforestation, responsible for more than 97% of native vegetation loss in the last six years.
“Starting in 2023, the Cerrado became the Brazilian biome with the largest deforested area. There was a change in the pattern of deforestation, shifting away from the Amazon and becoming even more concentrated in MATOPIBA. So, even with the reduction, we had an increase in the concentration of deforestation in these four states,” observes ecologist and coordinator of the Cerrado Program at the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), Isabel Figueiredo. The ISPN Cerrado Program is dedicated to expanding the protection of this biome, mainly through support for communities that traditionally occupy and conserve areas of native Cerrado.
Isabel Figueiredo believes that a commitment from the states that make up MATOPIBA is necessary for the revision of deforestation authorization procedures.
“Often the data is insufficient and the procedures do not meet the most appropriate criteria. So, we find many authorizations that do not provide the Rural Environmental Registry [CAR] number of the properties, which do not have a polygon of the area. Thus, monitoring, transparency, and social control over these deforestation authorizations become very difficult,” he explains.
The 2024 RAD report shows that deforestation on rural properties registered in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) accounts for 81,4% of the alerts nationwide, while only 0,8% of registered properties have deforestation records. In other words, the suppression of native vegetation is concentrated on a few large rural properties.
The publication of the 2024 RAD (Annual Environmental Report) comes at a crucial moment for the Brazilian environmental agenda. The country seeks to regain international credibility and meet deforestation reduction targets. Despite the decrease in deforested area recorded by the report, Isabel Figueiredo emphasizes that the goal of zero deforestation by 2030 is still far from being achieved.
“There is something to celebrate, but we want much more, because our goal is zero deforestation. We have to continue dialoguing with the states about how they will commit to continuing to control this deforestation,” he says.
Deforestation in Maranhão
Maranhão has once again topped the national ranking for deforestation, according to the Annual Deforestation Report in Brazil (RAD 2024), released on May 15th by the MapBiomas initiative. Despite a 34% decrease compared to the previous year, the state recorded a loss of 218,3 hectares of native vegetation, almost one and a half times the area of São Luís Island, which has 141 hectares and is home to the capital and three other cities.
Deforestation in Maranhão was concentrated almost entirely in the Cerrado, a biome that covers 66% of the state and which, despite harboring the headwaters of the most important rivers for the population, suffered 95,4% of the deforestation recorded in 2024, which is equivalent to the loss of 208 hectares of native vegetation.
The average rate of deforestation in Maranhão was 598 hectares per day, or 837 football fields deforested every 24 hours. This destruction of the Maranhão Cerrado is mainly driven by the advance of large-scale monoculture, with soy and corn, as well as livestock farming and mining, investments that have the state government as an important ally and promoter. Balsas, in the southern region, the state's largest soy producer, maintained its position as the second municipality in Brazil with the most deforestation, losing 16,2 hectares of native vegetation last year.
While the RAD 2024 was being released on the 15th, in Balsas, the 21st Agrobalsas – “the largest agribusiness event in Maranhão” – was taking place, held between the 12th and 16th. On the 13th, Governor Carlos Brandão personally announced, during the fair, a six-month exemption for rural producers from the special grain contribution (CEG), which is levied on the production, storage or transport of grains such as soybeans and corn in the Maranhão territory destined for export.
According to the announcement, at the end of the exemption, starting in August, a 0,5% tax will be charged on the value per ton of grain, and in 2026, the rate will be reduced to 1% of the value per ton of grain. The CEG (Gross Equity Tax) was established with a rate of 1,8% on the value per ton of grain. Since 2017, producers of soybeans, corn, millet, rice, and sorghum have also benefited from a reduction in the ICMS (Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services) rate from 12% to 2%, as determined by Decree 33.110/2017.
“Note that there is a clear choice to sacrifice the Cerrado for large agribusiness investments. For the second year in a row, Maranhão stands out as the state that has deforested the most native vegetation, that has deforested the most Cerrado. It is an uncomfortable position, which the state insists on maintaining due to the incentives it has been giving to agribusiness,” states the anthropologist and executive coordinator of the Center for Indigenous Work (CTI), Jaime Siqueira.
Lack of transparency
The RAD Biomas 2024 report indicates that the State of Maranhão does not provide public databases of authorizations for vegetation suppression or enforcement actions, but, unlike what occurred in 2023, it sent data to MapBiomas for the 2024 report: data on authorizations and enforcement actions, but with restrictions on the use of the authorization database due to technical issues.
In a statement, the State Secretariat for the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMA) affirmed that the 34,3% reduction in deforestation rates “was the result of actions such as the Deforestation Prevention and Control Plan (PPCDQ/MA), the Maranhão Without Burning and Living Forest Maranhão programs, in addition to strengthening enforcement and land and environmental regularization.”
The statement also says that “authorizations for alternative land use are issued and registered through the Sinaflor/Ibama Platform. Whenever there are requests related to deforestation, whether legal or illegal, or to wildfires, the information is passed on based on technical data or through official bulletins. And that the authorizations granted undergo rigorous monitoring, with the aim of ensuring that the execution occurs according to the previously approved project.”
SEMA argues that the actions currently underway have generated concrete results, and that "the Government of the State of Maranhão remains committed to continuing to reduce deforestation rates, combining environmental preservation with responsible economic development."
For environmentalists, the figures from Maranhão are a sign that the fight against deforestation still needs to be greatly intensified, specifically through enforcement, and that transparency and land tenure control are far from ideal.
“We have already filed several complaints with SEMA, sending documents to the Secretariat questioning the criteria for issuing these authorizations. We have never received a response regarding this, and these criteria continue to circumvent, so to speak, important precepts when authorizing the suppression of vegetation,” adds Jaime Siqueira, who also represents the 'Cerrado em Pé Coalition', which brings together various civil society organizations, such as ISPN, the Maranhão Agroecology Network (RAMA), CTI, the Interstate Movement of Babaçu Coconut Breakers (MIQCB), among others. The Coalition was formed based on the alarming numbers released each year by MapBiomas regarding the size of deforested areas in the Cerrado.
Among the main problems identified by organizations in the vegetation suppression permits issued by SEMA are the splitting of permits, that is, the issuance of several smaller permits to avoid a more complex licensing process; and the lack of assessment of the combined impact of issuing several vegetation suppression permits, meaning there is no assessment of the total damage from the associated deforestation of several different areas.
The 1st Specialized Public Prosecutor's Office for the Protection of the Environment, Urban Planning and Cultural Heritage of São Luís will hold a public hearing on June 4th to discuss the active transparency of environmental data and information from the State Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA). The meeting aims to analyze the conformity of this information with Federal Law No. 10.650/2003, the principles of the Escazú Agreement, and decisions of the Superior Court of Justice.
Cássio Bezerra / ISPN Communications Office