The plant area destroyed by fires in Brazil increased by 79% in 2024 to 30.8 million hectares, larger than the area of Italy, according to a report from the monitoring platform MapBiomas published on Wednesday.
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This is the largest area burned in the Latin American country 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 all the country in 2023, specifies the study.
The year 2024 was “atypical and alarming”, summarizes Ane Alencar, coordinator of MapBiomas Incendie, the monitoring platform of the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian collective bringing together NGOs, experts and universities.
According to official data published in early January, more than 140,000 fire outbreaks were recorded in the Brazilian Amazon in 2024, the first time in 17 years and an increase of 42% compared to 2023.
Questioned by AFP, the Ministry of the Environment linked the fires to drought. “In 2024, Brazil recorded the strongest drought in extent and intensity in 74 years, worsened by climate change,” he explained.
The ministry stressed that in 2025 a new National Integrated Fire Management Policy will be put in place, which must strengthen “articulation with states and municipalities, a crucial factor in achieving faster responses to fires” .
Scientists also believe that the scale of these fires is linked to global warming, which makes vegetation drier, making it easier for the flames to spread.
But in almost all cases they are caused by individuals.
Mme 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, there were more forests burned than pastures.
“This is a negative indicator, because once forests succumb to fire, they remain very vulnerable to new fires,” warns Ane Alencar.
COP 30 in November
These results are particularly bad for left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as the Amazon city of Belém is due to host the UN climate conference COP 30 in 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.
Lula made environmental protection one of the priorities of his mandate. Deforestation had also fallen by more than 30% in one year in August, according to official statistics, the lowest percentage in nine years.
In September, however, he admitted that Brazil was not “100% ready” to fight such an outbreak of forest fires, which the government blamed on “climate terrorism”.
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 Mme Alencar.
At COP 30, Brazil will have the difficult task of trying to lead progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement, as new US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would once again leave withdraw.
The main aim of the agreement is to “keep the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”, with an eventual target of “at 1.5°C”.
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