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SCIENCE
Amazon rainforest fires: everything you need to know - The Verge
ENVIRONMENT
Everything you need to know about the fires in the
Amazon
Why are the fires burning? And why is it such a big deal?
By Justine Calma @justcalma
Aug 28, 2019, 3:33pm EDT
Charred areas of the Amazon in Brazil, August 27, 2019 | JOAO LAET/AFP/Getty Images
Record-breaking fires are ripping through the Amazon — an ecosystem on which the
whole world depends. The Verge will update this page with news and analysis on the
fires and the effects that could linger once the ash settles.
Table of Contents:
Why is the Amazon burning?
Why is this a big deal?
Why is this a hot topic politically?
How are the fires being fought?
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Why is the Amazon burning?
An unprecedented number of fires raged throughout Brazil in 2019, intensifying in
August. That month, the country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported
that there were more than 80,000 fires, the most that it had ever recorded. It was a
nearly 80 percent jump compared to the number of fires the country experienced over
the same time period in 2018. More than half of those fires took place in the Amazon.
The number of blazes decreased in September, after president Jair Bolsonaro bowed to
mounting pressure to address the flames and announced a 60-day ban on setting fires to
clear land. Some exceptions were made for indigenous peoples who practice
subsistence agriculture and those who’ve received clearance by environmental
authorities to use controlled burning to prevent larger fires.
“THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THIS RISE IN FIRE ACTIVITY IS ASSOCIATED WITH A SHARP RISE IN
DEFORESTATION”
“These are intentional fires to clear the forest,” Cathelijne Stoof, coordinator of the Fire
Center at Wageningen University (WUR) in the Netherlands, tells The Verge. “People
want to get rid of the forest to make agricultural land, for people to eat meat.”
“There is no doubt that this rise in fire activity is associated with a sharp rise in
deforestation,” Paulo Artaxo, an atmospheric physicist at the University of São Paulo,
told Science Magazine. He explained that the fires are expanding along the borders of
new agricultural development, which is what’s often seen in fires related to forest
clearing.
President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, which had pledged to open up the Amazon to
more development, has sought to shift attention away from deforestation. Bolsonaro
initially pointed a finger at NGOs opposing his policies for allegedly intentionally setting
fires in protest, without giving any evidence to back his claim. In August, he fired the
director of the National Institute for Space Research over a dispute over data it released
showing the sharp uptick in deforestation that’s taken place since Bolsonaro took office.
On August 20th, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles tweeted that dry
weather, wind, and heat caused the fires to spread so widely. But even during the dry
season, large fires aren’t a natural phenomenon in the Amazon’s tropical ecosystem.
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Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, August 2019 | CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images
Why is this a big deal?
Everyone on the planet benefits from the health of the Amazon. As its trees take in
carbon dioxide and release oxygen, the Amazon plays a huge role in pulling planetwarming greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Without it, climate change speeds
up. But as the world’s largest rainforest is eaten away by logging, mining, and
agribusiness, it may not be able to provide the same buffer.
“The Amazon was buying you some time that it is not going to buy anymore,” Carlos
Quesada, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research, told Public
Radio International in 2018. Scientists warn that the rainforest could reach a tipping
point, turning into something more like a savanna when it can no longer sustain itself as
a rainforest. That would mean it’s not able to soak up nearly as much carbon as it does
now. And if the Amazon as we know it dies, it wouldn’t go quietly. As the trees and plants
perish, they would release billions of tons of carbon that has been stored for decades —
making it nearly impossible to escape a climate catastrophe.
EVERYONE ON THE PLANET BENEFITS FROM THE HEALTH OF THE AMAZON
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Of course, those nearest to the fires will bear the most immediate effects. Smoke from
the fires got so bad, it seemed to turn day into night in São Paulo on August 20th.
Residents say the air quality is still making it difficult to breathe. On top of that, a massive
global study on air pollution found that among the two dozen countries it observed, Brazil
showed one of the sharpest increases in mortality rates whenever there’s more soot in
the air.
And because fire isn’t a natural phenomenon in the region, it can have outsized impacts
on local plants and animals. One in ten of all animal species on Earth call the Amazon
home, and experts expect that they will be dramatically affected by the fires in the short
term. In the Amazon, plants and animals are “exceptionally sensitive” to fire, Jos Barlow,
a professor of conservation science at Lancaster University in the UK, said to The Verge
in an email. According to Barlow, even low-intensity fires with flames just 30 centimeters
tall can kill up to half of the trees burned in a tropical rainforest.
Why is this a hot topic politically?
When Jair Bolsonaro was campaigning for office as a far-right candidate, he called for
setting aside less land in the Amazon for indigenous tribes and preservation, and instead
making it easier for industry to come into the rainforest. Since his election in October
2018, Bolsonaro put the Ministry of Agriculture in charge of the demarcation of
indigenous territories instead of the Justice Ministry, essentially “letting the fox take over
the chicken coop,” according to one lawmaker. His policies have been politically popular
among industry and agricultural interests in Brazil, even as they’ve been condemned by
Brazilian environmental groups and opposition lawmakers. Hundreds of indigenous
women stormed the country’s capital on August 13th to protest Bolsonaro’s
environmental rollbacks and encroachment of development on indigenous lands. The
hashtag #PrayforAmazonia blew up on Twitter.
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Indigenous women take part in a protest against Bolsonaro’s environmental policies on August 13th, 2019 | Photo by Tuane
Fernandes/picture alliance via Getty Images
About 60 percent of the Amazon can be found within Brazil’s borders, which gives the
nation a massive amount of influence over the region. Not surprisingly, the fires have
called international attention to the plight of the Amazon and have turned up the heat on
Bolsonaro’s environmental policies.
French President Emmanuel Macron took to Twitter to call for action, pushing for
emergency international talks on the Amazon at the G7 summit. On August 26th, the
world’s seven largest economies offered Brazil more than $22 million in aid to help it get
the fires under control. Bolsonaro promptly turned down the money, accusing Macron on
Twitter of treating Brazil like a colony. Some in Brazil, including Bolsonaro, see the
international aid as an attack on Brazil’s sovereignty, and its right to decide how to
manage the land within its borders.
“LETTING THE FOX TAKE OVER THE CHICKEN COOP”
President Donald Trump, on the other hand, congratulated Bolsonaro on his handling of
the fires. “He is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great
job for the people of Brazil,” he tweeted on the 27th.
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Bolsonaro has since said that he’ll reconsider the deal, as long as Macron takes back his
“insults” and Brazil has control over how the money is spent. On the 27th, Bolsonaro
accepted $12.2 million in aid from the UK.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro | Photo credit should read EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty Images
How are the fires being fought?
After weeks of international and internal pressure, Bolsonaro deployed the military to
help battle the fires on August 24, sending 44,000 troops to six states. Reuters reported
the next day that warplanes were dousing flames.
“It’s a complex operation. We have a lot of challenges,” Paulo Barroso tells The Verge.
Barroso is the chairman of the national forest fire management committee of the National
League of Military Firefighters Corps in Brazil. He has spent three decades fighting fires
in Mato Grosso, one of the regions most affected by the ongoing fires. According to
Barroso, more than 10,400 firefighters are spread thin across 5.5 million square
kilometers in the Amazon and “hotspots” break out in the locations they’re unable to
cover.
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“WE DON’T HAVE AN ADEQUATE STRUCTURE TO PREVENT, TO CONTROL, AND TO FIGHT THE FOREST
FIRES”
Barroso contends that they need more equipment and infrastructure to adequately battle
the flames. There are 778 municipalities throughout the Amazon, but according to
Barroso, only 110 of those have fire departments. “We don’t have an adequate structure
to prevent, to control, and to fight the forest fires,” Barroso says. He wants to establish a
forest fire protection system in the Amazon that brings together government entities,
indigenous peoples, local communities, the military, large companies, NGOs, and
education and research centers. “We have to integrate everybody,” Barroso says,
adding, “we need money to do this, we have to receive a great investment.”
Barroso and other experts agree that it’s important to look ahead to prevent fires like
we’re seeing now. After all, August is just the beginning of Brazil’s largely manmade fire
season, when slashing-and-burning in the country peaks and coincides with drier
weather.
Military firefighters in Brazil, August 2019 | Photo credit should read SERGIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images
Controlled burns are also a popular deforestation technique in other countries where the
Amazon is burning, including Bolivia. There, the government brought in a modified
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Boeing 747 supertanker to douse the flames.
Using planes to put out wildfires in the Amazon isn’t a typical method of firefighting in
tropical forests, and is likely to get expensive, Lancaster University’s Jos Barlow tells The
Verge. He says that large-scale fires in areas cleared by deforestation “are best
contained with wide firebreaks created with bulldozers — not easy in remote regions.” If
the fires enter the forest itself, they require different tactics. “They can normally be
contained by clearing narrow fire breaks in the leaf litter and fine fuel,” Barlow says. “But
this is labour intensive over large scales, and fires need to be reached soon, before they
get too big.”
Fires that have been intentionally set, as we’re seeing in Brazil, can be even more
difficult to control compared to a sudden wildland fire. “They’re designed to be
deliberately destructive,” says Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology and research associate at the
University of Oregon. Slashing before burning produces a lot of very dry, very flammable
fuel. And at this scale, Ingalsbee calls the fires “an act of global vandalism.”
Barlow says, “The best fire fighting technique in the Amazon is to prevent them in the
first place — by controlling deforestation and managing agricultural activities.”
WUR’s Cathelijne Stoof agrees: “Fighting the fires is of course important now,” she says.
“For the longer term, it is way more important to focus on deforestation.” ■
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