Brazil’s official monitoring agency is reporting a sharp increase in wildfires this year and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday said that non-governmental organizations (NGO) could be setting them to make him look bad.
The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency monitoring deforestation and wildfires, said that the nation has seen a record number of wildfires this year, counting 74,155 as of Tuesday, an 84 percent increase compared with the same period last year.
“Maybe — I am not affirming it — these [NGO people] are carrying out some criminal actions to draw attention against me, against the government of Brazil,” Bolsonaro told reporters.
Photo: AFP / Lauren Dauphin / NASA
“There is a war going on in the world against Brazil, an information war,” Bolsonaro said.
The states that have been most affected by fires this year are Mato Grosso, Para and Amazonas — all in the Amazon region — accounting for 41.7 percent of all fires.
“It is very difficult to have natural fires in the Amazon. It happens, but the majority come from the hand of humans,” said Paulo Moutinho, cofounder of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute.
Moutinho, who has been working in the Amazon forests for nearly 30 years, said fires are mostly used to clean up vast areas of land for farming or logging.
The fires can easily get out of control, especially now during the Amazon’s dry season, and spread to densely forested protected areas.
This year, the Amazon has not suffered from serious dryness, Moutinho said.
“We’re lucky. If we had had droughts like in the past four years, this would be even worse,” he said.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly criticized environmental nonprofits, calling them obstacles to the development the nation’s full economic potential.
Bolsonaro and Brazilian Minister of Environmental Affairs Ricardo Salles are both close to the rural caucus in the Brazilian Congress and have been urging more development and economic opportunities in the Amazon region, which they consider overly protected by legislation.
Some NGOs, environmentalists and academics have been blaming the administration’s pro-development policies for a sharp increase in Amazon deforestation shown in the latest data from the space research institute.
The government is also facing international pressure to protect the vast rainforest from illegal logging or mining activities. The Amazon is often referred to as the planet’s lungs, because it is a major absorber of carbon dioxide.
Citing Brazil’s apparent lack of commitment to fighting deforestation, Germany and Norway have withheld more than US$60 million in funds earmarked for sustainability projects in Brazil’s forests.
French and German leaders have also threatened not to ratify a trade deal between the EU and Mercosur countries to pressure Brazil into complying with its environmental pledges within the Paris Agreement.
However, experts say that Brazilians and particularly farmers could be the first people affected by excessive deforestation, as it could change the regional climate, bringing higher temperatures and less rain.
Meanwhile, Salles was booed on Wednesday as he took the stage at a five-day UN workshop on climate change in the northern state of Bahia — an event he had tried to cancel earlier this year.
Some in the audience shouted while waving signs reading, “Stop ecocide” or “The Amazon is burning.”
Salles spoke briefly, saying that climate change needs to be addressed.
“People are asking for more and more actions... There is an acknowledgment that we are in a situation of crisis and emergency,” said former Peruvian minister of environmental affairs Manuel Pulgar Vidal, who attended the event.
Vidal, who now works for the nonprofit WWF, said that the criticism directed at Salles could eventually prod Bolsonaro’s administration into taking action on climate change.
“There is no room for negationism,” Vidal said.
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