Cumulative Fire Outbreaks in Amazon Between January and September Highest Since 2010

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The number of fire outbreaks recorded in the Amazon between January and September this year is the highest since 2010, according to data from the INPE (National Institute for Space Research). That year, there were 102,409 outbreaks in the forest between January 1st and September 30th; in 2020, over the same period, there were 76,030.

Moreover, between January and Thursday, October 8th, the Amazon recorded almost the same number of outbreaks as in the entire year 2019: 81,805 against 89,176 recorded last year.

September is traditionally the month with the highest number of outbreaks in the forest. This year, there were 32,017 fire outbreaks in the forest between September 1st and 30th – a 61 percent increase compared to September 2019. The number was slightly below the historical average for the month, which is 32,812 outbreaks.

The highest number of outbreaks ever recorded in September occurred in 2007 when there were 73,141 fires. The INPE has been monitoring the data on fires in all Brazilian biomes since 1998.

Last month was also the worst on record in terms of number of fires in the Pantanal: there were 8,106 recorded. The preceding monthly record was of 5,993, in August 2005.

“This proves that the actions the government has been boasting about and saying it has been taking to prevent fires in fact have no effect on the forest, the Cerrado, or the Pantanal. The truth is only one: Brazil is on fire,” says Romulo Batista, spokesperson for the Greenpeace Amazon campaign.

“While the country is on fire, the image of Brazil is going up in smoke. It is no wonder that we had a massive investors’ flight last month and the veto to the Mercosur-European Union agreement was symbolically passed by the European Parliament”, says Batista.

Deforestation

Last month, the Legal Amazon saw an area of 964 km² under deforestation alert, the second-highest figure in five years.

“The deforestation figures remain high and unacceptable. In September, each minute, an area the size of two soccer fields was illegally felled”, said Marcio Astrini, the Climate Observatory’s executive secretary in a statement.

“While the vice-president displays the same denialism about the environmental crisis as the President and the Minister of the Environment, crime is running loose in the Amazon, with the assurance of impunity,” added Astrini.

The alerts were issued by the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER), which provides daily warnings of changes in forest cover for areas larger than three hectares (0.03 km²), both for fully deforested areas and those in the process of forest degradation (logging, mining, patch burning, and others).

The government surveillance system points to areas with traces of devastation that need to be inspected by IBAMA, rather than the official deforestation rates, which are typically higher than those recorded by DETER.

The Legal Amazon corresponds to 59 percent of Brazilian territory and encompasses an area of eight states (Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins) and part of Maranhão. The majority of the deforested area in September was in Pará.

Deforestation and patch burning are related. Patch burning is part of a strategy to “clean up” the soil that was deforested to be later used in cattle raising or planting. It is the so-called “Amazon deforestation cycle”.

Conflict with the government

The INPE data has led to conflict with members of the federal government.

On September 30th, President Jair Bolsonaro declared in a recorded speech presented at the United Nations (UN) biodiversity summit that organizations, in partnership with “some NGOs,” are responsible for “environmental crimes” in Brazil and also abroad. The President offered no evidence to support his statements.

Four days earlier, the Presidency’s Special Secretariat of Social Communication (SECOM) published incorrect data about the fires recorded in the country in 2020. The Secretariat’s statement said that the burned area throughout the country was the lowest in the past 18 years.

However, the statement overlooked a fact that featured in the picture posted by the SECOM itself along with the message: the figures for 2020 referred to the first eight months of the year – January to August. The data for other years considered the full twelve months.

This is significant because the increase in the number of fire outbreaks occurs precisely in the second half of the year – more specifically in the months of August, September, and October, with the peak in September.

Source: G1