Brazilian season Forest fire It has already begun, and the early data combined with the severe drought has raised concerns that despite efforts to extinguish the fires, national damage in 2021 will remain at the high level of the past two years.
According to data released on Thursday, the government space agency, which uses satellites to monitor fires, reported that more area burned in July than in any July since 2016. The same is true in June.
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Most Brazilian fires are man-made, usually triggered illegally by predators clearing livestock or crops from the forest. According to historical data, fires often start to increase in June and reach a peak in September. In the dry season, they can easily get out of control, razing large areas of forest to the ground.
Brazil has the world’s largest tropical rainforest and tropical wetlands-the Amazon and the Pantanal-which experienced violent fires in 2019 and 2020, respectively, causing the largest annual forest loss since 2015. This has aroused global criticism of the presidential government’s response to Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly called for the development of the region.
This year, the Cerrado savanna, which straddles the central and western regions of Brazil, has suffered more than in previous years. In the first seven months of 2021, an area almost as large as Connecticut and New Jersey was burned there.
Ane Alencar, scientific director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, stated in an online panel discussion on July 27 that the number of Amazon fires this year has decreased due to the cool weather, which limits the possibility of fire spread. But she added that deforestation has remained the same as in the past two years, and there is still a lot of dry matter on the ground waiting to burn.
“I am concerned about the next few months,” said Alencar, who is also the coordinator of MapBiomas Fogo, which compiles deforestation and fire data for the entire region. “When this cold front disappears, the vegetation will become drier, and then our temperature will rise. … I’m not sure if the deforestation people will ignite it.”
On July 22, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Environment announced the establishment of a working group to prevent and investigate fires in 11 states of the Amazon, Pantanal, and Cerrado biomes, because Brazil suffered the worst drought in 90 years , The disaster intensified. According to a statement, approximately 6,000 people, including federal and state police and firefighters, and state public safety and environmental officials, will participate in this work.
On June 29, Bolsonaro ordered the redeployment of soldiers to the Amazon to fight fires and deforestation, and also issued a 120-day ban on unauthorized outdoor fires.
However, similar measures in previous years did not prevent illegal fires. Vinicius Silgueiro, territorial intelligence coordinator of the Mato Grosso State Life Center Institute, said that more than 90% of the Pantanal wetlands discovered in 2020 occurred after a similar presidential ban.
“The feeling of impunity is very high. Law enforcement is far below the necessary level,” Silgueiro said.
According to Mauren Lazzaretti, Mato Grosso State Minister of Environment, half of its territory in Mato Grosso State is in the Amazon region. The federal and state governments started coordinated operations last year to end the frequent deprivation of other areas and vulnerable areas. Overlapping areas.
The state has also purchased a helicopter and plans to deploy dozens of aircraft borrowed by farmers and businesses in the Pantanal to put flame retardants into the fire.
Last year, the Pantanal wetland area exceeded 4 million hectares (approximately 15,000 square miles), accounting for about 27% of its area-the most since the official record began in 2003. In tropical rainforests, fires often kill local wildlife such as jaguars, caiman and giant otters.
“The scale of the fire last year has aroused social concern about personal responsibility,” Lazaretti said. “This year the participation of cities, farmers and even traditional and indigenous communities is much higher.”
The previous year, the Amazon fire attracted global attention, and several European governments publicly criticized Bolsonaro’s government. Bolsonaro countered that although fires across the country and the Amazon region have increased over 2018, they are roughly the same as the average level of previous years and have fallen sharply from 15 years ago. He called on European leaders to pay attention to their own backyard.
Earlier studies have shown that the Amazon absorbs about 2 billion tons of the 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere each year, making it an important part of the global effort to curb climate change. But a study led by Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation was published in the journal Nature on July 14-spanning 10 years and involving nearly 600 overpasses-found that the intensified dry season and increased deforestation have led to More fires and higher carbon emissions. The southeastern part of the Amazon, especially areas destroyed by logging, has become a net source of carbon.
Paulo Artaxo, professor of environmental physics at the University of Sao Paulo and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that other recent studies have shown that even the better-preserved western Amazon region is now carbon neutral in terms of emissions. , And a few years ago, it was a carbon sink.
The famous climatologist Carlos Nobre stated that the Brazilian Amazon is approaching a “critical point”, after which the dense jungle will no longer produce enough water to maintain its current form and will begin to transform into tropical rare Tree steppe.
Noble said that the Bolsonaro government has not demonstrated any encouraging changes in its approach to helping save the rainforest.
He said the federal government “continues to encourage organized crime in the Amazon region, which is responsible for the theft of timber, illegal deforestation and fires”. “The people who committed these crimes are not worried that law enforcement will become harsher. They continue to feel more powerful.”
© 2021 Canadian Press
