After being hit by unprecedented floods in May, the south of Brazil and part of the Amazon and the Pantanal risk facing a “severe” drought, Marina Silva, the Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, warned on Wednesday. ‘Environment. The floods caused the deaths of 170 people.
“After the heavy rains we will have drought, probably in the Amazon and the Pantanal (…),” declared Minister Marina Silva during an official ceremony in the presence of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The minister recalled that these episodes of drought are often accompanied by “terrible forest fires”.
The northeast of the country is not spared
In addition to this part of the country, the minister also spoke of an ongoing “severe drought” in the semi-arid region of Caatinga, in the Brazilian northeast. These extreme climatic events are due to “the combination of weather phenomena such as El Niño and the intensification of climate change”, assured Marina Silva.
To deal with this climate change, the President of Brazil signed 14 decrees to strengthen environmental protection in the country. One of these decrees consists of an agreement between the federal government and the states that shelter the Amazon and the Pantanal for a common policy for the prevention and control of forest fires. In January, Brazil recorded more than 17,000 forest fires, a record, according to satellite images from the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE).
