Amazon rainforest hit by wildfires sees worst first half of year in 20 years

Brazil recorded 13,489 fires in the first half of the year in the Amazon, the worst figure in 20 years. Experts attribute the dramatic increase in part to a historic drought in the world’s largest rainforest.

Since the data began to be compiled by the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE, public) in 1998, 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). The total observed from January 1 to June 30, 2024 is significantly higher than that of the same period in 2023 (8,344), according to satellite data available Monday, July 1.

This is bad news for the government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, while deforestation continues to decline in the Amazon, a vast territory that plays a major role in combating global warming by absorbing CO2. According to INPE data, deforestation there reached 1,525 km2 from January 1 to June 21, compared to 2,649 km2 in the first half of 2023, a reduction of 42%. Last year, it had been halved compared to 2022. Lula has promised to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, which had surged under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

According to Romulo Batista, spokesman for the Brazilian branch of the Greenpeace organization, “climate change contributes” to the increase in forest fires, caused in particular by an exceptional drought that hit the Amazon in 2023.

“Unfortunately most natural biomes [les zones géographiques caractérisées par des écosystèmes et des conditions climatiques similaires] Brazilians suffer water stress due to lack of rainfallhe explained to Agence France-Presse. The environment becomes drier, and drier vegetation is more vulnerable to fires.” Romulo Batista, however, believes that “Most fires are not spontaneous, or caused by lightning”. For him they are begotten “by human action”including the use of slash-and-burn techniques for agricultural expansion.

Record fires in the Pantanal and Cerrado

Forest fires also reached record levels for the first half of the year in two other biomes rich in biodiversity located south of the Amazon: the Pantanal, the largest wetland on the planet, and the Cerrado savannah.

In the Pantanal, a region at the heart of the news in recent days with clouds of smoke and a sky tinged red due to the fires, 3,538 fires have been recorded since the beginning of the year, an increase of 2018% compared to the first half of 2023. This also represents an increase of almost 40% compared to 2020, when all records were broken and 30% of the biome was affected by fires throughout the year.

In June alone, 2,639 fires were identified, six times more than the previous record for this month of the year (435), dating back to 2005. The situation is all the more worrying as the peak of fires is usually reached in the second half of the year, particularly in September, at the heart of the dry season.

The state of Mato Grosso in central Brazil, where much of the Pantanal is located, declared a state of emergency last week, and the government said it was sending firefighter reinforcements from other regions to fight the blazes.

The Cerrado, for its part, recorded almost as many fires as the Amazon in the first half of the year (13,229), beating the previous record, which dated back to 2007 (13,214).