Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has reached a record low since November, data released Friday after the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva touted its environmental record at the United Nations climate talks.

Satellite monitoring found that 201 square kilometers (78 square miles) of forest cover in Brazil’s largest rainforest was destroyed last month, according to data from the national space agency’s DETER observing program; this is 64 percent less than in November 2022.

This was the lowest reading in a month since tracking began in 2015.

Lula, a veteran leftist who returned to office in January after widespread deforestation under his right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) and vowed “Brazil is back” in the climate fight, proudly praised his administration’s “dramatic” progress in preventing Brazil’s destruction. Amazon is at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai this week.

Lula pledged to achieve zero deforestation by 2030.

But the good news for rainforests, whose carbon-sucking trees are key to the climate race, was overruled by record deforestation in November in the Cerrado savannah, a biodiverse region beneath the Amazon that has recently been hit by increasingly warm weather.

Deforestation there increased by 238 percent from November 2022 to 572 square kilometers.

Ana Carolina Crisostomo of the World Wildlife Fund’s Brazil office said the Lula government’s increased environmental controls have “significantly reduced deforestation in the Amazon, but many challenges remain.”

But “there is an urgent need to prioritize actions in the Cerrado,” he told AFP.