Dual onslaught of increased deforestation and fires threatens Amazon
Brazilian environmentalists say much more needs to be done to combat the dual threat of deforestation and fires that threaten what some have called the planet's lungs: the Amazon rainforest.
In June, Brazil's government space research agency, INPE, detected 2,248 fires in the Amazon rainforest, up from 1,880 in June 2019.
June 2020 averaged roughly 75 fires per day in the Amazon, compared with an average of nearly 1,000 blazes a day when fires peaked in August 2019.
A more worrying indicator is rising deforestation, because fires are usually set to clear the land after trees have been cut down.
Deforestation is up 34% in the first five months of the year, from a year ago, preliminary INPE data shows.
Environmentalists have said weaker environmental enforcement under right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is to blame for rising destruction. Bolsonaro has called for more farming and mining in protected areas of the Amazon, while defending the country for still preserving the majority of the rainforest.
Bolsonaro deployed the armed forces to protect the Amazon in May, as he did in August last year. Despite that initiative, deforestation rose 12% in May from a year earlier and increased in June.
The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a Brazilian non-governmental organization, predicts that at the current pace of deforestation, there will be around 9,000 square kilometers (3,475 square miles) of Amazon by the end of July that have been cut down but not burned since the beginning of 2019, when Bolsonaro assumed office.
(Source: Reuters)
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