RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s most valuable ecosystems are suffering a destructive wave of fires that ravage a wealth of vegetation and fauna. The Amazon is experiencing the worst wave of fires of the past decade, according to an official report released on Thursday, October 1st, by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
Satellites have detected over 32,000 hot spots in the world’s largest tropical rainforest. In the Midwest, another rich Brazilian biome, less known but with vast biodiversity, the Pantanal -the largest wetland on the planet- is suffering the worst fire season in history.
For opposition politicians, the environment is the Bolsonaro government’s Achilles heel.
Also on Thursday, the Federal Supreme Court issued a 48-hour deadline for Environment Minister Ricardo Salles to explain the removal by CONAMA of protection to mangroves and sandbanks along the Brazilian coast to promote tourism.
This is the drought and fire season in the Amazon. Since the start of the year, fires in the region have increased by 13 percent compared to 2019, according to INPE’s most recent data. The situation in the rainforest also worsened in September: the outbreaks were 9.2 percent higher than in August.
The international situation, with Europe and the rest of the world focused on the health and economic crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, has prevented this year’s fires from causing a diplomatic crisis like that of August 2019. A year ago, a major spike in the fires in August, when the G7 was meeting in France, triggered strong criticism from world leaders towards Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, argued with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
Now the international context is different, but the rainforests continue to blaze, despite the fact that this year authorities have been curbing the fires since the start of the season with a major military deployment in the region. “We have had many fires for two months now. We are now worse off than last year,” explained Ane Alencar, scientific director of the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon (IPAM). “If the drought persists, it could become worse. We are at the mercy of rainfall,” added the expert. There are over 30,000 hot spots if the rest of the Amazon countries are included.
Lacking the aura of the Amazon, the fires in the Pantanal have less repercussion abroad, but here they have been the main environmental issue in recent months. The fire has destroyed a quarter of this wetland’s territory located in Mato Grosso, one of the ecosystems with the greatest biodiversity in the world and home to a remarkable jaguar population.
The government is fully aware that the environment is a hindrance in its relationship with the rest of the world, as evidenced when Bolsonaro devoted half of his speech to the subject by videoconference before the United Nations General Assembly last month. It is a critical issue in the negotiations for the free trade agreement ratification process between the European Union and Mercosur, which has already begun.
The Amazon fires are also under the radar of the Democrat candidate to replace Donald Trump as president of the United States. The only mention of Brazil in the first chaotic electoral debate came from the lips of Joe Biden, who pledged that if he wins, he will raise US$20 billion (about US$113 billion) in his country and the world to fight the fires in the Amazon.
Biden cautioned that if Brazil does not change its environmental policy, it could suffer economic losses. Investment funds and European companies are raising their voices ever more, pressured by their clients, for Brazilian authorities to treat seriously the need to preserve the fragile Amazon in an attempt to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Biden’s reference to the fires outraged Bolsonaro, always fearful, like a good part of his countrymen, that the colossal rainforest would be taken over by foreigners. The Brazilian replied to the American candidate in a string of harsh tweets, including one that said: “Brazil has changed. Today its president, unlike the left, no longer accepts bribes, criminal demarcations or unfounded threats. And it ended in capital letters: “Our sovereignty is non-negotiable.”
Source: El Pais