BRASILIA (BRAZIL) – The number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest increased from 20% in June to a 13-year-high for the month, according to a government data on Wednesday. Researchers are apprehensive that it could signal the coming back of last year’s surge in forest fires.
Health experts are afraid that the smoke covers the region during the dry season, causing respiratory problems. This could cause further difficulties for COVID-19 patients.
Brazil’s government space research agency, INPE, found 2,248 fires in the Amazon rainforest, up from 1,880 in June 2019.
Still, the burning is less intense when compared with the surge in fires seen last August. The latter had triggered a global outcry that Brazil was not taking the necessary steps to protect the world’s largest rainforest.
June 2020 averaged roughly 75 fires per day in the Amazon, compared with an average of nearly 1,000 blazes a day when fires increases in August 2019.
“It’s a bad sign, but what really is going to count is what happens from now on,” said Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research.
A more worrying indicator is the increasing rate of deforestation, he said, because fires are usually set so that the land could be cleared after trees have been cut down.
Deforestation has gone up 34% in the first five months of the year, from a year ago, preliminary INPE data shows.
Fearnside said weak environmental enforcement under right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is the reason for rising destruction. Bolsonaro has asked for more farming and mining in protected areas of the Amazon. He was seen defending the country for still preserving the majority of the rainforest.
Bolsonaro deployed the armed forces to protect the Amazon in May, as he did in August last year. Despite that initiative, deforestation rose 12% in May from a year earlier and increased in June.
The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a Brazilian non-governmental organisation, predicts that going by the current pace of deforestation, there will be around 9,000 square kilometers (3,475 square miles) of Amazon by the end of July that have been deforested but not burned since the beginning of 2019, when Bolsonaro took over the office.
IPAM said in its analysis earlier this month that the areas at risk of being on fire compare with 5,539 square kilometers deforested and burned from January 2019 to April 2020.
Meanwhile, communities in the Amazon are getting themselves prepared for the smoke that takes over the region during the fire season. This is generally at its height from August to November.
Guilherme Pivoto, an infectologist in Amazonas state, said deteriorating air quality from the fires could be harmful for those suffering from COVID-19, he said.
Pivoto said, “Those that contract COVID have a higher chance of an interaction between the pollution and COVID-19, causing drawn-out cases with more symptoms.”
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.