The Tapajós region followed high levels of deforestation following the pattern observed in other states of the Legal Amazon. T According to the Brazilian Institute of Spatial Research (INPE), between 2016 and 2020, deforestation has increased by 231% in the region. Such level encompasses dimensions of deforested land that has varied from approximately 46 thousand hectares to 152 thousand hectares in the four year range observed. Weak environmental governance and incentives to deforestation due to fraught monitoring along this period led to forest loss, particularly in non-designated public lands. It is important to highlight that levels of deforestation also increased in rural private properties, conservation units, including those designated to the sustainable use of traditional communities, and Indigenous Territories. In the latter case, deforestation was a consequence of invasions by grileiros (land grabbers). This historical social (and illegal) group very present in Brazilian agrarian history is usually incentivized by larger structures of land speculation and concentration connected to finance, infrastructures as well as international commodity trade and prices. Mining and fire scars had been the modalities of land conversion attesting for most of deforestation increases between 2016 and 2020. In the case of gold mining, an activity that represents a large portion of the Tapajós region economy, particularly in the Mid and Upper Tapajós River cities, most of it is carried on an illegal basis. This activity increased by 360% between 2016 and 2020, while fire scars increased by 390%, reaching 262 thousand hectares in 2020.”
