Amazon rainforest erupts in fires; farmers blamed
Deforestation increased rapidly since Brazil’s Bolsonaro took office last year
RIO DE JANEIRO » Fires are burning in the Amazon rainforest at one of the fastest paces in years, Brazil’s space research center said this week.
The center, the National Institute for Space Research, which monitors fires using satellite images, reported Wednesday that it had detected 39,194 fires this year in the world’s largest rainforest, a 77% increase from the same period in 2018.
The fires, most of which have been set by farmers clearing their land, are raging in uninhabited areas of rainforest and intruding on populated areas in the country’s north, including the states of Rondônia and Acre.
The blazes are so large and widespread that smoke has wafted thousands of miles away to the Atlantic coast and São Paulo, the country’s most populous city, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Widely shared photos on social media showed darkened skies over São Paulo during the daytime, but researchers said they were working to understand whether that was connected to the fires.
Wednesday, Brazil’s farright president, Jair Bolsonaro, accused nongovernmental organizations of setting the fires in the rainforest after the government pulled their funding, although he presented no evidence.
“It could be; it could; I’m not saying it is, a criminal action by these NGO people to call attention against me, against the Brazilian government,” he said. “This is the war we face.”
Thursday, Bolsonaro said the Brazilian government lacks the resources to fight the fires, weeks after telling donors he did not need their money.
“The Amazon is bigger than Europe, how will you fight criminal fires in such an area?,” he asked reporters as he left the presidential residence. “We do nothave the resources for that.”
Although fires are a regular and natural occurrence during the dry season at this time of year, environmentalists blamed
the sharp rise on farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture.
French President EmmanuelMacron said onhisTwitter account the fires in the Amazon forest are an international emergency and should be discussed by the G7 summit that will begin on Saturday in Biarritz, France.
Researchers, environmentalists and former government officials have been alarmed by the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which is one of the world’s most important natural resources andplays a vital role in absorbing carbon dioxide as globalwarming advances.
Deforestation of the Amazon has increased rapidly since Bolsonaro, who was electedinOctober, tookoffice and his government cut back on efforts to confront illegal activity in the rainforest.
Critics say Bolsonaro’s policies have emboldened loggers, farmers and miners who want to clear out land illegally.
Federal prosecutors also said they will investigate an ad reportedly published by a local newspaper last week encouraging farmers to participate in “FireDay,” in which they would burn large areas of forest “to show Bolsonaro their willingness to work.”
Mikaela Weisse, a manager of Global ForestWatch, a programfor theWorld Resources Institute, an environmental research group, said the rate in the number of fires detected by satellite images this year was roughly comparable to 2016.
“It is definitely something to be concerned about, especially withmore research coming out about reaching a tipping point,” she said, referring to the point at which parts of the Amazon would no longer have forests and turn to savanna.
The fires burning now are mostly happening in previously deforested areas, most likely related to agricultural practices, she said.
“Natural fires are very rare in the Amazon, so all, or almost all, the fires we are seeing are set by humans,” Weisse said.
Local newspapers also reported that states in the Amazon were trying to respond to a crisis.
In Amazonas, a crisis cabinet was set up, and in Acre, the governor declared a state of environmental alert to stop the fires because the air pollution could present a serious health hazard.
Henrique Barbosa, a professor at the University of São Paulo and part of the Physics Institute’s Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, said that the number of fires in the Amazon had risen during the past two presidential administrations but that they got worse this year.
Barbosa said the fires were a marker of the final stage of deforestation, in which trees are cut down formarket and then loggers and farmers burn the rest.
Ane Alencar, science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brazil, said she was shocked by thenumbers, especially because the Amazon is not going through an extreme drought period, as happened from 2014-16 because of El Niño.
The drought period goes from the end of August to November in some states, and it is typically when farmers set fires in the forest to clear out land.
“I’mconcerned,” Alencar said. “We are at the beginning of the fire season. This could still get much worse.
“What I can say with absolute certainty is that there is a very strong relationship between deforestation and fires. This isn’t a wildfire.”
Barbosa and other researchers are now trying to understand if the smoke rising from the fires in the Amazon — or in surrounding areas — had wafted over São Paulo, where residents were concerned that the unusual darkness that fell over the city this week was caused by the fires.
“We are trying to understand how much of this black soot was suspended over São Paulo,” he said. “In reality, all the signs suggest it will get worse. There is nothing on the horizon that gives us the tiniest bit of hope something will be done to protect the environment inthe next four years.”