Fire in the Amazon region: Brazil renounces fire ban

Within 60 days, no more fires may be laid, for example, to develop pasture and arable land on cleared areas. This provides for a ban that the Brazilian government had enacted last Wednesday. However, the provision has been restricted again: except for the ban, fires required and approved for the harvest are now outside the nine states of the Amazon.

This is apparent from changes to the original decree published in the Official Journal on Friday (local time). Up to that point, exceptions have been granted only to indigenous communities that cultivate agriculture for self-sufficiency and to fires that have been approved by the competent environmental authorities for the purposes of fire prevention, fire-fighting or plant health.

In Brazil, the heaviest fires are raging for years. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 85,000 fires have been registered in the South American country - 75 percent more than in the same period of the previous year. About half of the fires occurred in the Amazon region, one third in the Cerrado savanna in southeastern Brazil. In the nine states of the Amazon, the number of fires doubled compared to last year.

The numbers for the disasterBrazil's fire roller

In the opinion of environmentalists, farmers are usually setting fire to deforested land in order to create new grazing land and farmland for soybean cultivation. Because of the dry season, the fires repeatedly attack intact forest areas.

Critics accuse right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro of creating a climate where farmers feel encouraged to do more slash-and-burn. After a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bolsonaro wrote on Twitter that he had had a "productive" conversation with Merkel, who once again confirmed the "sovereignty of Brazil over our Amazon region".

In the debate on a response to the devastating forest fires, Federal Environment Minister Schulze suggested that the sustainability rules of the Mercosur Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Latin American countries be supplemented with a meat certification system. "Soy and beef should only be allowed to be imported if the production demonstrably does not harm the rainforest," Schulze told SPIEGEL.