For several weeks, tens of thousands of fires have been burning down large areas of the Amazon rainforest. The fires in the world’s largest rainforest have sent clouds of smoke across the region, darkened skies over Brazil’s largest city São Paulo and pumped tons of carbon into the earth’s atmosphere.
The number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon since January 2019 totals more than 74,000 – an increase of 84 percent from the same period last year, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space. Most of the fires have been set intentionally by large ranchers and giant agribusiness firms seeking to clear the forest for cattle grazing and the planting of cash crops.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro campaigned on a pledge to repeal environmental protections, open up the Amazon to development and challenge indigenous people’s control of large swaths of the rainforest region. Bolsonaro, who has been widely criticized for his government’s role in encouraging illegal deforestation, was recently offered some $20 million by the Group of Seven nations to assist in fighting fires in the Amazon. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Moira Birss, campaign director with Amazon Watch, who talks about the scale of the fires burning across the Amazon, the role of Brazilian President Bolsonaro and what the international community can do to limit the damage to the planet’s environment and climate.
MOIRA BIRSS: Right now, there are about 10,000 forest fires raging across the Brazilian Amazon. That’s covering an immense amount of land. Most statistics from Brazil are in hectares. I think that’s around at least around 1,500 square miles and it’s an increase of about 84 percent over last year and some of the highest numbers that the Brazilian Institute that tracks this has seen since at least 2013. It’s also important to note that there are also fires raging in Bolivia and Peru right now. Some of those fires are on the edges of the Amazon that touch those countries. Also in some of the savannah, more dry forests that cover parts of Bolivia in particular. So the scale is really quite massive. And really devastating because the Amazon is an ecosystem that’s incredibly important.
It’s important because of the biodiversity. It’s one of the most biodiverse places in the world because of the cultural diversity. There are hundreds of indigenous nationalities that call Amazon home. And it’s important because of the way that it helps stabilize the global climate. The 20 percent of the world’s oxygen statistic is a little bit in dispute. I think the most important thing to understand about the Amazon’s contribution to the climate and climate stability are that it absorbs about 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide – or it had been until it’s been destroyed so widely. Because of the immense amount of moisture that all of those trees in this rich tropical area produce, it also contributes an immense amount to rainfall patterns throughout the Western Hemisphere.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Moira, how are these fires started – and tell us about the role of Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro and his policies since coming in to the presidency of Brazil.
MOIRA BIRSS: It’s pretty clear the vast majority of these fires were started by farmers and ranchers who were trying to clear more land to expand agribusiness operations. And in fact, there have been several of them who have been quoted in the Brazilian press claiming responsibility – happily and proudly claiming responsibility for having started these fires. And in fact, a few of them have explicitly stated that they did so, inspired by Jair Bolsonaro and his rhetoric. He’s been since – well since his campaign and, then putting this into action since he took office in January – been talking about the supposed to need to open the Amazon for business and using really xenophobic rhetoric in terms of saying that the indigenous people there aren’t fit to take care of it and they couldn’t possibly be happy just living in the forest. And he has, since taking office, slashed environmental protections. He slashed the budgets of environmental enforcement agencies and indigenous rights agencies. He has fired the heads of many of those agencies that were in place before he took office – (and) with his rhetoric, he has really encouraged deforestation for agribusiness and mining.
BETWEEN THE LINES: It seems that as a planet we are at the mercy of these politicians who are either climate change deniers or solidly in the pocket of the fossil fuel developers and have no concern about the planet’s future. And it seems that more dramatic, more radical action may be necessary at a point in the near future to rein in what could doom the entire planet, that could doom human civilization, could doom the future of all the planets’ many species and ecosystems. What are you thinking about in terms of collective action that the planet must take to protect our very existence on planet earth?
MOIRA BIRSS: Yeah. I mean, I think you named really well the stakes here. And here at Amazon Watch, we are doing a number of things and we are rallying with allies to build our capacities. But one of the things we’re doing is calling for a Global Day of Action on Sept. 5. And, we’ve invited folks from around the world to join that day of action and organize in their cities and towns as they see fit. And, we imagine there’ll be many more. And of course, we will be bringing the issue of the Amazon and – I’m sure we won’t be the only ones bringing it to the Climate Strike, the Global Climate Strike later in September. You’re so right that we need to be, you know, taking to the streets to really demand action from our politicians.
We also think that it’s really important to be supporting the indigenous peoples and communities on the ground. You know, we’ve gotten a lot of attention and donations in the past week and two days since the fires really gained global attention. And we are working to pass as much of that support as we can directly to the communities and organizations that themselves are on the frontlines of this site and are standing up day and night to both the wildcat miners or loggers in the rainforest, but also to the politicians in Brazil and in other parts of the Amazon where we work to prevent more rollbacks on protection, and in fact to spur positive action.
Learn more about what people around the world are doing to assist in protecting the Amazon rainforest by visiting Amazon Watch at amazonwatch.org.
