Biblioteca

Mato Grosso is the Brazil’s largest producer of hardwood, accounting for 54% of the wood extracted from the Amazon forests (Imaflora, 2019). The activity is the economic base of 44 municipalities in Mato Grosso, covering an area of 3.7 million hectares under approved forest management and generating about 90 thousand direct and indirect jobs. In value, Mato Grosso is the second largest wood exporter among Amazon states, with a value of around US$ 120 million a year (Comex Stat, 2020).

Between 2018 and 2019, the state of Mato Grosso recorded a 60% increase in the logged area compared to the previous period, between 2016 and 2017. There were 457 thousand hectares (4.57 Km²) of native forests logged between August 2017 and July 2019. The results are from an analysis made by the Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV), a Brazilian NGO, in partnership with the Environmental State Agency of Mato Grosso (Sema-MT).

On the previous period, from August 2015 to July 2017, the assessment found 268 thousand hectares of logged areas. The number of authorizations issued almost quadrupled between 2014 and 2019 and might be the main responsible for the increase in the logged area.

This rise in the number of logging authorizations is the result of a speed up in Sema’s internal processes and the implementation of the Mato Grosso Environmental Rural Registry System (SIMCAR) in 2017.

The infograph produced in partnership with the Environmental State Agency of Mato Grosso (Sema-MT) is available, in portuguese, here.