There has been a 51 percent drop in Amazon deforestation in the six months upto the end of February 2010 compared with the same period last year.

There has been a 23 percent increase in Amazon deforestation in the six months upto the end of February 2010 compared with the same period last year.

Not a Typo

Environmentalists are currently as confused as you will be reading these figures, with the conflicting reports on the state of deforestation coming from two different organisations who both monitor the South American rainforest.

The Sources

The more optimistic figure is courtesy of the Brazil’s National Space Agency INPE, who estimate that nearly 1360 sq km of forest was cleared from August 2009 to February 2010, down from 2,800 sq km a year earlier.

The other figure comes from Imazon, an independent organization that aims to improve forest transparency through advanced analysis of satellite imagery and other tools.

Difficult

Intra-year estimates for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon are notoriously difficult to assess due to cloud cover, distinctions between degradation and deforestation, seasonal variations, and other variables. Imazon believe that their figures are more accurate, and claim that a previous miscalculation on the part of the Space Agency has skewed their latest figure.

Degradation or Deforestation?

Carlos Souza, a researcher with Imazon who was last week honoured with the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship together with his colleague Beto Verissimo, attributes the discrepancy to “differences in estimates of deforestation in August and September last year when INPE’s results were much higher than ours.”

Souza told mongabay.com that INPE’s tracking system captured a lot of forest degradation as deforestation during the period, inflating its overall tally for forest loss. The agency’s estimates that nearly 1360 square kilometers of forest were cleared from August 2009 to February 2010, down from early 2,800 sq km a year earlier. By comparison, Imazon puts the total around 924 sq km, up from 749 sq km a year earlier.

Good News

Nevertheless deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to trend downward since peaking in 2004. The decline is attributed to new interest among business leaders in reducing deforestation, new forestry policies and increased vigilance against illegal logging and agriculture, expansion of the country’s protected area network, and a stronger real.

Confident of Brazil’s progress in controlling deforestation, in 2008 President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva announced a plan to reduce annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon 70 percent from a 1996-2005 baseline by 2018 as part of the country’s climate change commitment.