Amazon will continue to burn wildfires in 2020 despite promises to save it

NOVO PROGRESSO, Brazil – A year ago this month, the forest around the city of Novo Progresso erupted into flames – the first major fires in the dry season of the Brazilian Amazon that eventually saw more than 100,000 fires and caused worldwide unrest against the inability or unwillingness of the government to protect the rainforest.

This year, President Jair Bolsonaro promised to control the burning – typically started by local farmers clearing land for cattle or soybeans, one of Brazil’s top exports. He imposed a four-month ban on most fires and sent the army in to prevent blows and fight.

But this week, the smoke is so thick again around Novo Progresso that police have reported that motorists have crashed because they cannot see.

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As a smoke wreath Novo Progresso, this year’s burning season could determine whether Bolsonaro, a keen supporter of bringing more farms and farms to the Amazon, is ready and able to stop the fires. Experts say the blazes are pushing the world’s largest rainforest to a tipping point, after which it will stop generating enough generation to sustain itself, and about two-thirds of the forest will begin an irreversible, decades-long decline in tropical savannah.

But Novo Progresso residents like businessman Claudio Herculano believe the city has only grown in recent years due to increased ranching in the area.

“It pints everyone to breathe this air,” Herculano, 68, said this week. ‘I have a small house up for grabs, and I’m a little worried it might be destroyed. But all the people here are looking for better days, and we know what drives this economy. ”

Bolsonaro sends mixed signals: He greenlit an army-led operation to combat Amazon destruction in May, but then he denied this month that the region’s trees could catch fire. Speaking on a video about the Amazon with colleagues in South America, he also mentioned a year-on-year decline in July’s deforestation data, denying the fact that it was still the third-highest reading for any month since 2015.

“This story that the Amazon is burning is a lie,” he claimed, even as smoke from more than 1,100 fires wafted across the region that day.

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On Monday and Tuesday of this week, reporters from The Associated Press did not see a single soldier in or around Novo Progresso.

And this year could see more fires than past, according to Paulo Barreto, a forestry engineer and remediation researcher at environmental group Imazon.

At the beginning of the Amazon dry season, in July, more trees had fallen, seeing deforestation from August 2019 to July jump 34% from the previous 12 months, according to preliminary data from the Brazilian space agency. Typically, after felling, the next step is burning, usually without the required authorization – because it is a much easier and cheaper way than using heavy machinery to clear brushes and trees. Furthermore, forest area degraded by logging – which is much more susceptible to wildfire than native forest – has increased 465%, Barreto said.

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August and September are like the burning in overdrive trapeze. And in the first half of August, satellites detected 19,000 fires across Brazil’s Amazon – bringing the moon on course to match the August 2019 blazes that drew worldwide attention.

The fires of 2019, while almost a jump of 40% from the previous year, were only slightly higher than the average for the previous decade. But Bolsonaro’s drive to reduce environmental protection to stimulate economic development, coupled with the upheaval in deforestation, had made the world prime for insurgency. Some of Europe’s statesmen have slammed Bolsonaro as proposing to withdraw funding, and its lawmakers are threatening to deny ratification of the free trade that Brazil has been negotiating for two decades. Brazil’s agribusiness exporters feared boycotts, and asset managers considered separating from Brazilian companies.

Bolsonaro sent the army out to help quench the flames – and the criticism – in late August 2019.

Losses from last year also launched a federal police investigation into what became known as Fire Day – when several fires were set. They are trying to determine if a group of ranchers had coordinated the burning on messaging app WhatsApp.

In October, they sent their first findings to a federal judge in the Amazon city of Itaituba, asking for an extension of the deadline for their probe, according to Sérgio Pimenta, the police detective who oversees the investigation.

Last Thursday – almost 10 months later – the judge dismissed the request, without giving an explanation for the delay, Pimenta said. The judge’s office declined to comment.

The episode underscores how difficult it is to bring prosecutors into such cases, according to Paulo Moreira, the public prosecutor at the Amazon task force, whose jurisdiction includes Novo Progresso.

“The feeling of impunity is very great,” Moreira said by phone.

Joaquim da Silva, a rancher at Novo Progresso, says the problem is that many titles do not miss the country they use – and that makes it easier for them to avoid punishment, even if they destroy with unforgettable leave. His own neighbor set fires earlier in the day.

“He passed the law, did what he wanted, used a chainsaw, shredded everything down,” Silva, 59, told the AP as he stood on his own 22-acre farm. “He doesn’t care.”

Ranchers also make progress in virgin forest. Novo Progresso – meaning new advances in Portuguese – is adjacent to the Jamanxim National Forest and the Environmental Protection Area, both of which have been deforested by deforestation; from above they appear disintegrating.

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The Amazon has lost about 17% of its original area and will reach a tipping point at the current rate in the next 15 to 30 years, said Carlos Nobre, a leading climatologist. As it sinks, it will release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making it “extremely difficult” to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate goals, said Nobre, a senior scientist at the Institute of Sao Paulo’s Institute of Advanced Studies. .

He added signs of change are already emerging: The dry season in the southern third of the Amazon – where Novo Progresso is located – has reached nearly four months, up from three months in the 1980s. It has also become hotter.

The 25,000 inhabitants of Novo Progresso occupy an area larger than New Jersey and Connecticut combined, making it one of the largest and most sparsely populated municipalities in Brazil. Pick-up trucks and motorcycles tread dirt on its roads lined with small shops and evangelical churches. Entering its dusty downtown from the south, one is greeted by a Bolsonaro billboard that says it supports development. It was paid for by farmers; he won the territory in a landslide in the 2018 elections.

This year, Bolsonaro sent troops ahead of the dry season, in May – but Vice President Hamilton Mourão has said deployment was six months too late to clear the 2020 unrest. Still, the so-called Operation Green Brazil will reduce 2 fires, according to Mourão, who is leading it.

Eleven government agencies are coordinating the operation, which includes 3,400 soldiers and 269 Allied agents, who have fined 442 million reais ($ 82 million) and seized some 700 chainsaws and 28,000 cubic meters (36,600 cubic yards) of wood. , as well as more than 500 boats and 200 cars, according to the Ministry of Defense.

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“We will continue with this kind of work until the end of 2022, or until the group realizes the disintegration that this can no longer be done,” Mourão, a pensioner general, said last month.

It is not clear whether these efforts will be enough to calm the global downturn. Izabella Teixeira, who was the environment minister in a Labor government, told the AP that the government has yet to prove that it has changed its Amazon position.

“It’s starting a new phase,” she said, “if it is credible, if it is efficient and permanent, we will have to evaluate it over the next 12 months.”