Unheard of in five years. The plant area destroyed by fires in Brazil is estimated at 30.8 million hectares in 2024, higher than that of Italy. This represents an increase of 79% in one year, according to a report from MapBiomas, the monitoring platform of the Brazilian Climate Observatory, published this Wednesday, January 22. This is the largest area burned in Brazil in one year since 2019.
The Amazon, a gigantic natural region with a crucial ecosystem for climate regulation, was the most affected with some 17.9 million hectares ravaged, or 58% of the total, and more than all the areas burned in the entire country in 2023 (16 million hectares), specifies the study. The year 2024 was “atypical and alarming”, summarizes Ane Alencar, coordinator of MapBiomas Incendie.
Ane Alencar warns in particular about the fires which have affected forests, key areas for the capture of carbon responsible for global warming: 8.5 million hectares were devastated in 2024, compared to 2.2 million in 2023. And for the first time in the Amazon, the number of hectares of burned forests is greater than the surface area of pastures. “This is a negative indicator, because once forests succumb to fire, they remain very vulnerable to new fires”have you Ane Alencar.
If scientists believe that the scale of these fires is linked to global warming, which makes vegetation drier, making it easier for the flames to spread, they are in the majority of cases caused by humans. Some practice burning to clear fields intended for crops or livestock, or set fire to areas of forest to illegally appropriate land.
“The impacts of this devastation underline the urgency of action […] to contain an environmental crisis exacerbated by extreme climatic conditions, but triggered by human action, as was the case last year”insisted Ane Alencar. According to official data, more than 140,000 fire outbreaks were recorded in 2024, the highest level in 17 years and an increase of 42% compared to 2023.
-Brazil was not “100% ready”
And yet, Brazilian leader Lula has made environmental protection one of the priorities of his mandate. With encouraging beginnings: deforestation had declined by more than 30% over one year in August, according to official statistics, a low level in nine years. In September, he nevertheless recognized that Brazil was not “100% ready” to fight against a wave of forest fires, which the government blamed on “climate terrorism”.
The results of this report are particularly bad for President Lula, as the Amazonian city of Belém is due to host the United Nations COP30 climate conference next November. It is also the state of Para (north), of which Belém is the capital, which suffered the most from the fires in 2024, with 7.3 million hectares devastated, around a quarter of the national total.
During this international climate meeting, Brazil will have the difficult task of trying to make progress towards the objectives of the Paris Agreement, while the new American president Donald Trump announced that the United States were going to withdraw again. The main goal of the Paris Agreement is to “keep the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”with a long-term objective of 1.5°C, according to the COP.
