Rain forest continues to burn in 2020
NOVO PROGRESSO, Brazil — A year ago this month, the forest around the town of Novo Progresso erupted into flames — the first major blazes in the Brazilian Amazon’s dry season that ultimately saw more than 100,000 fires and spurred global outrage against the government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the rain forest.
This year, President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to control the burning — typically started by local farmers to clear land for cattle or to grow soybeans, one of Brazil’s top exports. He imposed a fourmonth ban on most fires and sent in the army to prevent and battle blazes.
But this week the smoke is again so thick around Novo Progresso that police have reported motorists have crashed because they can’t see.
As smoke wreaths Novo Progresso, this year’s burning season could determine whether Bolsonaro, an avid supporter of bringing more farming and ranching to the Amazon, is willing and able to halt the fires. Experts say the blazes are pushing the world’s largest rain forest toward a tipping point, after which it will cease to generate enough rainfall to sustain itself, and approximately twothirds of the forest will begin an irreversible, decadeslong decline into tropical savanna.
But residents of Novo Progresso like businessman Claudio Herculano believe the city has grown in the past few years only because of increased ranching in the area.
“It pains anyone to breathe this air,” Herculano, 68, said this week. “I have a little house uphill, and I do worry a bit that it could be destroyed. But all the people here are looking for better days, and we know what drives this economy.”
Bolsonaro is sending mixed signals: He greenlit an armyled operation to fight Amazon destruction in May, but then this month he denied the region’s trees can catch fire. Speaking at a video summit about the Amazon with fellow South American leaders, he also touted a yearoveryear decrease in July deforestation data, omitting the fact it was still the thirdhighest reading for any month since 2015.
“This story that the Amazon is burning is a lie,” he claimed, even as smoke from more than 1,100 fires wafted over the region that day.
In the first half of August, satellites detected 19,000 fires across Brazil’s Amazon — putting the month on track to match August 2019’s blazes that drew global outcry.