Wildfires rage throughout the Amazon rainforest

Bryan Dyne

Satellite imagery reveals that at least a quarter of the Amazon rainforest is on fire or covered in soot and ash across the four Brazilian Amazonian states: Amazonas, Rondônia, Mato Grosso and Pará.

A combination of dry summer heat exacerbated by climate change, planned burnings and expanded deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has sparked at least 9,507 new wildfires in the region in the past week, for a total of more than 74,155 wildfires in the Amazon since January. According to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), this represents an 84 percent increase in Amazon fires from last year and the highest number of wildfires in the region since the agency began its records in 2013.

Cities across the region were blanketed with smoke, including Brazil’s largest city São Paulo, where wildfire smoke from Rondônia, Bolivia and Paraguay combined with dense rain clouds and a cold front which blotted out the Sun and brought nighttime lighting hours early. Amazonas declared a state of emergency on August 9 and residents across South America have been encouraged to stay indoors, particularly those with respiratory problems, heart or lung diseases.

While wildfires are a part of the life cycle of the Amazon, the massive increase in the number of fires this year is a direct result of the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Since coming into office, Bolsonaro has sought to increase the exploitation of the rainforest so that Brazil’s agricultural and mining industries can better compete on the global market, including an increase in logging and burning and a massive reduction in monitoring and oversight of these activities.

These policies are guided by “the new hopes for the Homeland: Brazil above everything!” a slogan uncovered in documents recently leaked to the online news site democraciaAbierta. They reveal that one of Bolsonaro’s major initiatives will be the so-called “Triple-A” project, which states, “it is necessary to build the Trombetas River hydroelectric plant, the Óbidos bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation of the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname.” Bolsonaro has also previously stated that he plans to bring nuclear power into the rainforest.

All of these projects will require major inroads into the Amazon, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforest. They also represent an attack on the one million indigenous people who live in the rainforest and have relied on it for millennia, whom the Brazilian president has specifically targeted for forced integration into capitalism, even if it means their extermination.