If you thought last year’s Amazon fires were destructive, brace yourself for a worse situation this year. Fire season has begun ahead of schedule already, and with frightening intensity. Analysis of official data by Unearthed shows that 2020 has seen the worst start to August in a decade, with 10,136 fires seen in the only the first ten days – that’s a 17% rise on last year. July was also worse, with 28% more fires (6,803 fires) than in July 2019.
As deforestation also continues, many people fear that the coming months could bring catastrophic damage to the region and trigger an environmental crisis. Romulo Batista, a senior forest campaigner for Greenpeace Brasil, said:
This is the direct result of this government’s lack of an environmental policy. We had more fires than last year.
Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), said:
I’m really worried. We can expect a catastrophic burning season.
These fires aren’t natural. They are set to clear land. Loggers come in and take the more valuable hardwoods to sell; then, the reaming trees are pulled down and burned along with any remaining vegetation. The land is then available for planting pasture and grazing cattle – the latter being responsible for 80% of deforestation in Amazonian countries. Greenpeace analysis shows that the worst-hit municipalities these first ten days of August were regions that produce cattle.
The dangerously high number are already beginning to contribute to the rising sense of alarm among business leaders and investors. For example, Candido Bacher, the CEO of Brazil’s biggest bank, Itaú Unibanco, said:
It is a very worrying situation. Clearly, the government’s environmental policy on the Amazon issue is not working. The bank will no longer finance meat companies linked to deforestation. We want to guarantee the industry won’t be supplied by meat from herds raised in deforested areas. We will do this by tracing.
What’s most concerning is that the drier the weather is, the greater the chances of these fires burning out of control and spreading into the surrounding jungle, causing massive forest fires. The more this happens, the less capacity the forest has to recover. These fires are changing the ecosystem.
Paulo Brando, a tropical forests ecologist from the University of California-Irvine, said:
These forest fires themselves create desiccating and destructive feedback loops that increase the chance of yet more fires. If forests lose their big trees, they also lose the humid microclimate that prevents fires from spreading, the sources of fruits and seeds, and important ecosystem services.
Tasso Azevedo, the coordinator of MapBiomas, which tracks Brazilian land-use change, said:
If it were just one fire, the forest might recover, given 20 or 30 years. But when fires happen repeatedly year on year, the forest has no chance to recover. The capacity of the forest to recover decreases immensely. Probably after three or four times, you have a fire, it won’t recover anymore, and if it’s not recovering, it’s getting drier, there is less resistance and it is more inflammable. We are changing the ecosystem. We are very close to 20% [of Amazon deforestation], so from now on we are at risk of a point of no return.
Deforestation is weakening a vital natural carbon sink. Additionally, the fire is emitting carbon dioxide-laden smoke and therefore contributes to acceleration in climate breakdown. The combination of deforestation inhibiting the rainforest capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and fires spewing carbon into the air is a recipe for extreme environmental disaster.
