The number of forest fires increased by 61% in September compared to the same month last year in the Brazilian Amazon, and almost tripled in the Pantanal, where all records have been broken, according to official figures released on Thursday 1st. October.
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The satellites of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) identified 32,017 fires last month in the Amazon, against 19,925 in September 2019. It is the worst month of September since 2017. Further south, in the Pantanal, the fires have broken all records: with 8,106 outbreaks, September 2020 is by far the worst month since these statistics began to be drawn up by the INPE in 1998.
On the weekend of September 26 and 27, the Brazilian government circulated on social media a graph supposed to show a decrease in forest fires in 2020. But the figures presented showed the areas that burned from January to August, compared to those 12 months of previous years.
Despite the edifying data provided by Inpe, a world-renowned public body, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently denounced a campaign of “
disinformation
” on the Pantanal and the Amazon.
Read also: Brazil: slight drop in fires in the Amazon in August
Hours later, during a speech at the United Nations Biodiversity Summit, he was moved by the “
international lust
” for Brazil's natural resources.
The far-right leader also accused "
certain NGOs
" of being behind "
environmental crimes
" to
generate
bad publicity in Brazil.
Last week, during his speech to the UN General Assembly, he had already caused a heated controversy by claiming that the fires in the Amazon were caused by indigenous people who used traditional techniques of itinerant burning.