From Crisis to Catastrophe: The Man-Made Inferno Devouring the Amazon | Amazon Watch (original) (raw)
All photos credit: @brigadadealter
Today’s Amazon fire emergency, like the climate crisis exacerbating it, is entirely man-made. What has become an annual nightmare for the forest and its peoples can only be solved by ending fossil fuels, guaranteeing the permanent protection of Indigenous and traditional lands, and barring the further expansion of industrial development and organized crime into the rainforest.
Brazil’s Bolsonaro regime fanned the flames, but the expanding destruction of the rainforest will continue each year unless there is a collective effort to stop it. Animal agriculture, land grabbing, devastation from “legal” and illegal mining, fossil fuel extraction, and industrial development across the biome are driving the worst fires in years – and the Amazon can not withstand this assault.
Recall that as vast swathes of the Brazilian Amazon were incinerated in 2019, the world took notice in an unprecedented show of alarm and solidarity, demanding that the Bolsonaro government take swift and decisive action to extinguish the flames. Yet when the smoke cleared, its root causes – Indigenous land invasions, violence against environmental and human rights defenders, and widespread ecological destruction – continued unabated.
In 2022, President Lula narrowly defeated Bolsonaro. His promises to defend the rainforest breathed new hope into the movement to avert the Amazon’s catastrophic tipping point. While deforestation has increasingly been contained under Lula’s administration, 2024 has witnessed the second consecutive year of historic Amazon drought and the highest number of fires in 20 years.
Meanwhile, fires are raging in Brazil’s Cerrado, Pantanal, and Mata Atlantica biomes, with 60% of the country covered in toxic smoke, while massive blazes engulf forests in neighboring Peru and Bolivia. In Peru, 16 of the country’s 25 regions have been affected by fires, with 70% of these blazes occurring in the Peruvian Amazon, affecting more than 87 Indigenous territories. In Bolivia, the government reports that 4 million hectares (40,000 sq. km.) have been impacted by the flames, which have reached 45 of the 58 Indigenous territories spanning the Amazon, Chiquitanía, and Chaco biomes.
As South America experiences an unprecedented number of fires, Brazil alone accounts for 76% of the continent’s hotspots, with more than 5,000 outbreaks in a single day. In just three Amazonian states, fire has already consumed 5.4 million hectares (54,000 sq. km.). As a result, rather than performing its critical function of absorbing carbon dioxide, the worst-impacted region of the Brazilian Amazon became the largest emitter of C02 in the world.
The destruction also breaks with the previous cycle of Amazon fires, where affected forests were generally degraded by selective logging prior to being torched for cattle ranching and other purposes. Fires in Brazil’s old growth forests grew 132% in August compared to 2023 making these critically preserved ecosystems one third of the areas affected.
Alarmingly, fires on Brazil’s Indigenous lands spiked by 39% between 2023 and 2024. These fires accounted for 24% of all Amazon blazes this year, reducing more than 1.3 million hectares (13,000 sq. km.) to ashes. As Brazil’s Indigenous territories nominally benefit from rigorous federal protections, their destruction by organized criminal networks with impunity exposes a gross lack of governance in the region.
While Brazilian authorities have claimed that the bulk of this year’s fires are driven by El Niño and unprecedented climate change-driven drought, Environmental Minister Marina Silva indicated that arson is another factor. With the vast majority of blazes consuming forests adjacent to agricultural areas, and Brazil’s agribusiness sector ceaselessly seizing more and more land to expand cattle ranching and monocrops, it is clear this association is more than a coincidence.
Beleaguered firefighters are again scrambling to contain the infernos, but specialists warn the fires will burn until much-anticipated – but entirely uncertain – rains return in October. As this crisis unfolds, many have asked: if deforestation is down, what is driving such unparalleled destruction?
One answer to this question might be found in what President Lula told the press when touring drought-stricken riverbanks in Amazonas state. “We take the need to combat drought, deforestation, fires, very seriously,” he said. “We need to focus on adaptation and preparedness for these phenomena.”
His statement appears rational until heard alongside his decisive support that same day for the paving of the polemic BR-319 road that cuts through some of Brazil’s best-preserved rainforests, threatening to unleash untold destruction and deepen the region’s crisis. We cannot “take deforestation seriously” and “focus on adaptation and preparedness” while simultaneously continuing the development model that created today’s emergency.
One commonality between Brazil and neighboring countries suffering from a scourge of drought and fires is a propensity to treat the symptom and not the illness. When fires consume vast forests, incinerating ecosystems and choking the air for millions, they must be fought. However, the cure to this crisis starts with prevention.
Voluntary fire brigades (such as the @brigadadealter, responsible for the images on this page) are risking their lives across the Amazon to protect the forest, its animals, and the planet’s biodiversity for the benefit of all humanity. Yet it is the responsibility of the Amazonian governments to create the conditions to combat the fires and protect the Amazon and its peoples.
In Brazil, the Lula government must fulfill its promises of respecting Indigenous rights and urgently carry out the demarcation of Indigenous lands. This is not only because Indigenous land titling is its constitutional duty, but also because it sends a much-needed signal to destructive actors, from the country’s agribusiness sector to its extractive industries to its criminal networks, that the federal government seeks to prioritize governance and the well-being of the Amazon’s best stewards in an increasingly lawless region.
In Peru, the growing power of industrial and illicit agribusiness such as palm oil, illegal logging, gold mining, and drug trafficking are driving a new wave of deforestation agents, and an explosion in Amazon fires never registered in the country’s history. They must be prevented by repealing anti-forest laws and containing the expansion of illegal economies. And these steps must be concurrent with the recognition and protection of Indigenous land and communities from rising levels of violence.
In Bolivia, the political mandate of the country’s “incendiary laws” which consider forests to be “idle” land awaiting conversion to agro-industrial purposes must be re-evaluated in light of the environmental crisis these policies are provoking. One urgent step would be to ban the expansion of industrial agriculture into new areas and firmly regulate agribusiness and land zoning practices.
The critical measures needed to contain today’s Amazon emergency are contingent on the international community, specifically in countries with strong political and economic ties to Amazonian nations. The concern and urgency demonstrated during the 2019 fires must again drive global public opinion and diplomatic and economic responses from authorities.
The solutions for a spiraling Amazon crisis are manifold, but no other actions will be effective without prioritizing protecting Indigenous territories. From that point we must continue to develop an entirely new vision for the biome and its peoples that thoroughly rejects the colonial extractive model that has brought the life-giving rainforest to a disastrous tipping point, imperiling our collective future.
To avert this disaster, the Amazon must be considered a no-go zone to all new extraction and the expansion of the destructive monoculture and pasture into forest and protected areas must be stopped. Meanwhile, its Indigenous peoples must gain definitive autonomy over their ancestral lands.
Immediate action is needed, and longer term solutions must be supported. Amazon Watch is calling on the international community, local governments, and civil society to unite to not only put out the fires, but end their root causes and hold accountable those responsible for the destruction of the forest we depend upon for humanity’s survival.
Please help us respond to the fires!