This summer will once again have been devastating for the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. This month of August, it really experienced its worst incendiary ravages for twelve years.
Satellite data has indeed detected 3,358 fire outbreaks in the rainforest in August alone. A sad record. We remember that in 2019, on August 10 exactly, a date now known as “Day of the Fire “, Brazilian farmers had set fire to a large area of the Amazon rainforest in order to recover farming lands. This event aroused the indignation of the international community.
This year, on August 22 alone, three times as many fires broke out.
Starts of fires that are not natural
For the association WWF Brazil, there is no secret. This uncontrolled increase in fires in the Amazon rainforest for 4 years is closely linked to deforestation. In fact, fires rarely break out naturally in a tropical rainforest. For the experts, there is no doubt that the farmers are, once again, to blame. The deforestation has never been so intense in this region. During the first half of 2022, almost 4,000 km2 of forest have disappeared.
Despite the illegality of this type of incendiary action, and despite international criticism, nothing is moving on the political side. Brazilian President Bolsonaro also rejects all the accusations, arguing that the Amazon rainforest belongs to Brazilians and that they have the right to do with it what they want. Quits to destroy one of the last primary forests in the world.
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