Brazil recorded 13,489 fires in the Amazon in the first half of the year, the worst figure in twenty years, according to satellite data available Monday.
That’s a 61 percent increase from last year, a rise that experts attribute in part to a historic drought that hit the world’s largest rainforest last year.
Since these data began to be compiled in 1998 by the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE, public), only two years have seen more fire outbreaks in the Amazon identified in the first half of the year: 2003 (17,143) and 2004 (17,340).
And the total observed from January 1 to June 30 is significantly higher than that of last year during the same period (8,344).
Bad news for the government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who sees the number of fires increasing while deforestation continues to decline in the Amazon.
Forest fires have also reached record levels for the first half of the year in two other biodiversity-rich ecosystems located south of the Amazon: the Pantanal, the largest wetland on the planet, and the Cerrado savannah.
In the Pantanal, 3,538 fire outbreaks were recorded, an increase of 2,018% compared to the first half of 2023.
The Cerrado, for its part, recorded almost as many fires as the Amazon in the first half of the year (13,229).
published on July 2 at 00:01, AFP
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