Brazil's Amazon records worst August fires in 12 years

An aerial view of smoke in Mapinguari National Park, in the Brazilian Amazon, on September 1. DOUGLAS MAGNO (AFP)

The images are repeated every year with the arrival of the dry season in the largest tropical forest in the world, but this time records are being broken.

The month of August in the Brazilian Amazon was the worst in the last 12 years.

The images captured via satellite by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded 33,116 fire sources.

In 2010, the worst to date, there were just over 45,000.

The numbers for August this year exceeded those of 2019, the year in which the fire in the jungle shocked the world and was the first major international scandal for the image of the Government of Jair Bolsonaro, who had just come to power.

September goes the same way.

In just one week, INPE satellites detected 18,374 fire sources, more than in all of September last year, when there were 16,742.

The enormous number of fires has caused a cloud of smoke that can also be seen from space and that has already reached Bolivia and the cities of the south and southeast of Brazil.

On the ground the situation is more dramatic.

In the city of Rio Branco, in the state of Acre, air pollution reached levels 13 times higher than what the WHO recommends.

But those who suffer the most are those who have their way of life in the jungle.

In the state of Pará, which usually tops the deforestation rankings, the fire destroyed much of the Hopryre village, on the Mãe Maria indigenous land.

According to testimonies of the indigenous leaders collected by the local media Amazonia Real, the fire destroyed 12 houses, the school and the community health post.

“My people took risks to save the lives of our brothers who lived by our side.

We did not measure efforts or the size of the danger we were running, it was a moment of desperation and great sadness”, said the cacique Kátia Silene,

The vast majority of fires are caused to eliminate the vegetation felled in the previous months.

And in this season there was a lot to burn.

In the first half of the year there were alerts for deforestation in 4,000 square kilometers of jungle, the highest figure for the period since there are records.

It is an area equivalent to almost seven times the city of Madrid.

Burning what has been felled and something else is a criminal ritual that is repeated year after year, but this season has been aggravated by the fear that the October elections will end the impunity promoted by the Bolsonaro government, as explained by the telephone coordinator of the Climate Observatory, Márcio Astrini: “Normally in an election year those who commit environmental crimes already have more freedom, because the candidate does not want to fine his voter.

That is natural, but this year there is one more factor, which is that the deforesters know that it is all or nothing, now or never.

And it is not only in the jungle, in Congress as well, there is an action to fell trees and laws to take advantage of what is possibly the final page of the Bolsonaro Government, ”he criticizes.

From organizations such as the Climate Observatory, which brings together dozens of environmental entities, they emphasize that it is not just that the control bodies have suffered budget cuts;

there is a lack of political will to tackle the problem.

Until September 5, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (Ibama) had executed only 37% of the entire budget it had for fire prevention this year.

The levels of fines applied to those who deforest and burn illegally have also fallen to historical lows, and the few fines that are still levied are almost never collected.

For Astrini, it is not about omission, but about "cooperation with environmental crime."

"It is natural that resources are not used to suffocate those who have as allies," she laments.

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