The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon in July rose 28 percent from July 2019, satellite data showed Saturday, fueling fears that the world’s biggest rainforest will again be devastated by fires in 2020.
Brazil’s national space agency, INPE, identified 6,803 fires in the Amazon region in July, up from 5,318 in 2019.
The figure is all the more troubling given that 2019 was already a devastating year for fires in the Amazon, triggering global outcry.
That has put pressure on Brazil, which holds around 60 percent of the Amazon basin region, to do more to protect the massive forest, seen as vital to containing the impact of climate change.
The fires are largely set to clear land illegally for farming, ranching and mining.
Activists accuse Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging the deforestation with calls to open up the rainforest to agriculture and industry. Under international pressure, Bolsonaro has deployed the army to fight the fires and declared a moratorium on burning. But activists say that does not go far enough to address the roots of the problem. Fires rose 77 percent on indigenous lands and 50 percent on protected nature reserves from July 2019, environmental group Greenpeace said, showing how illegal activities are increasingly encroaching on those areas.
On Thursday alone, satellites detected 1,007 fires in the Amazon, INPE said.
That was the worst single day for fires in the month of July since 2005, said Greenpeace.
“More than 1,000 fires in a single day is a 15-year record and shows the government’s strategy of media-spectacle operations is not working on the ground,” Greenpeace spokesman Romulo Batista said in a statement.
“On paper, the fire moratorium prohibits burning, but it only works if there is also a response on the ground, with more patrols. Criminals aren’t known for obeying the law.”
The Bolsonaro administration has slashed the budget, staff and programs of environmental authority IBAMA.
A climate change activist holds a placard to highlight environment hazards, deforestation and wildfires of the Amazon forest outside the Brazilian Consulate General in Mumbai, India, Aug. 23, 2019. Photo: Xinhua
