Wildfires around the world are the largest ‘in scale and in CO2 emissions’ in 18 years

The largest tropical forest in the world, the Amazon is a vital carbon reservoir that slows the pace of global warming.

It is also home to around 3 million species of plants and animals and 1 million indigenous people.

Experts say the region has returned to levels of deforestation last seen a decade ago.

“You may not see fires like the ones in California, because those in the Amazon are still very low, but they cause more damage,” says Paulo Moutinho, senior scientist at the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon (IPAM).

“Trees can die slowly in a few years.”

“A hectare of forest in the Amazon has 300 species of plants and trees, California, in comparison, has only 25”.

Data from the INPE (National Institute for Space Research) reveal that the number of fires in the Amazon increased by 28% between July 2019 and July 2020.

Unlike the drought conditions on the west coast of the United States, wildfires in Brazil are caused primarily by deforestation, which some environmentalists say is motivated by pro-agriculture and mining government policies.

But it’s not just the rainforests of South America that are burning. In the southern Amazon, in the Pantanal, the fires are also intense.

The biome spans Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia and is one of the most biodiverse areas in the world.

The fire has already devastated 15% of the region, with 2.3 million hectares.

As of Thursday (08/17), there were almost 16,000 fires, the highest number of fires since 1998, when INPE began to count these statistics.

Only in the first half of September, the number of outbreaks is almost double than in the whole of last year. Accumulated from January to September, the number of fires has tripled in relation to the same period in 2019.

In interviews, the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, the Vice President of the Republic, Hamilton Mourão, and President Jair Bolsonaro himself have tried to minimize the proportion of fires, often ignoring official data.

In the case of the Pantanal, Salles and Bolsonaro even attributed the advance of the fire to restrictions in the management of fire in grasslands and in environmental reserves and to an alleged “persecution” of free range cattle in the region – arguments, according to experts, support.

Satellite images also show dense wildfires in tropical Africa, across the savanna and grasslands where most of the world’s wildfires occur each year.

Although these fires appear to be quite dense, scientists say this does not necessarily mean they will have a more severe environmental impact.

“Most of these fires in Africa are natural processes that have been going on for thousands of years,” says Niels Andela, a professor at Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

“This is how the vegetation of the region regenerates.”

These African wildfires are also considered less damaging because regenerated savannas and grasslands absorb some of the carbon that is emitted during burning.

Although the forest fire season in Indonesia started a few months ago, the provinces of Central Kalimantan and Sumatra continue to suffer from forest fires.

Greenpeace said 64,000 hectares of forest had already been burned by the end of July, although that number is less than the previous year.

The country’s third-largest province, Central Kalimantan, declared a state of emergency in July, after recording more than 700 fires.

Environmentalists say the economic impact of COVID-19 has led to significant budget cuts, which has affected forest patrolling and fire prevention.

When the fires in California began to escalate last month, the Arctic Circle had already experienced a similar tragedy. The flames burned the native vegetation, the tundra and smoked the Siberian cities.

These fires in the Arctic emitted a record 244 megatons of carbon dioxide, 35% more than last year, according to the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.

Experts say the reason for the significant increase in emissions may be the burning of peatlands, where soils are rich in carbon.

According to them, a warmer winter and spring were partly responsible for the fires.

Every year, scientists say that an area of ​​roughly 4 million square kilometers of forest, about the size of the European Union, is burned by forest fires. This has a serious impact on biodiversity and global ecosystems.

Wildfires are part of a dangerous feedback loop. Fires release a significant amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This makes the Earth warmer and, in turn, the forests drier, increasing the likelihood of wildfires.

Earlier this week, the UN warned that the world had not fully met all of the biodiversity protection targets it had set for this decade.

A report from the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services last year warned that around 1 million species of animals and plants are threatened with extinction, a record in human history.

When forests burn, they emit large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming.

“At this point, fires add up to 5% of annual US emissions and 0.7% of global annual CO2 emissions,” says Pieter Tans, senior climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. from USA

Wildfires pollute the air, which also has an impact on public health. Atmospheric scientists say pollutants can travel long distances and become more toxic when they interact with sunlight and other elements.

“In the case of California and Oregon, the smoke has become part of the jet stream, leading to relatively rapid transport to Europe (a distance of 8,000 kilometers) in a few days,” says Scientist Mark Parrington Copernicus atmospheric atmospheric surveillance senior service.

“But the greatest risk to air quality and human health is near the source, where air quality has severely degraded.”

Fear also grows with the increased risk of severe COVID-19 cases in and around places with wildfires.

“In Brazil, covid infection in indigenous people is more than 150% higher than in the rest of the population,” says Moutinho, from IPAM.

“Given that many of these indigenous peoples are nearby or involved in wildfires, there is concern that air pollution may be contributing to the level of infections.”

Some studies have linked air pollution to severe cases of Covid-19. The World Health Organization has already alerted countries to this possible link.

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