Brazilian Amazon Records Worst August For Fires In 12 Years
According to official data launched Thursday, the Brazilian Amazon recorded its worst month of August for forest fires since 2010, with an eighteen percent rise from a year earlier.
The Brazilian INPE space agency stated its satellites had recorded 33,116 fires in the rainforest, a crucial buffer against global warming, in August this year, compared to 28,060 in the same month previous year.
At least 3,358 fires were recorded on August 22nd alone, the highest number for any 24-hour period since September 2007, it stated.
The number was nearly three-way that recorded on the so-called “Day of Fire”– August 10, 2019– when farmers introduced a coordinated plan to burn vast amounts of felled rainforest in the northern region of Para.
Then, fires sent thick, gray smoke all the way to São Paulo, some 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) away, and triggered an international outcry over one of Earth’s most important burning sources.
Between January and also August, the INPE recorded 46,022 fires– a sixteen percent rise from the same period in 2021.
The Amazon had not burnt more in one month of August– usually the worst for fires in the Brazilian dry season– since 2010, when 45,018 were recorded.
All the worst August figures since then– 30,900 fires in 2019, 29,307 in 2020, 28,060 in 2021, and 33,116 in 2022– occurred during the four-year term of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who will be seeking re-election following month.
“This uncontrolled rise in fires in the last 4 years is closely related to the increase in deforestation,” stated Mariana Napolitano of WWF Brazil.
“The Amazon is one humid rainforest and, contrary to what occurs in other biomes, fire does not arise spontaneously. Fires are always connected to human action,” she added.
According to specialists, fires are mainly caused by farmers who illegally clear land by burning vegetation.
Deforestation in Brazil is additionally at a historic high: in the 1st half of 2022, some 3,988 km2 were lost, one record since INPE’s Deter satellite monitoring system started collecting information in 2016.
Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, observes international criticism for one surge in Amazon devastation on his watch.
However, he rejects the censure.
“None of those that are attacking us have the right. If they desired a pretty forest to call their own, they might have preserved the ones in their countries,” he wrote on Twitter previous month.
“The Amazon forest belongs to Brazilians and always will,” said Bolsonaro.
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