Fire in the Brazilian Amazon
Concerns over Respiratory Health in the State of Rondônia, Brazil
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Deforestation and Fires
Deforestation in the Amazon
Over the course of about four decades, we have seen a rapid decline of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of deforestation have been linked to settlement, agriculture, timber and mining. [1]
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Human Rights Watch 2019 (Image from HRW Report: Rainforest Mafias )
Deforestation rates between the years 2004 and 2012 were reduced by 83% [2] , but began to increase again due to changes in policy and budgeting towards deforestation monitoring and enforcement [4] . By 2019, deforestation rates rose by 85% [5] , totaling 9,174 square kilometers from January to December [6] . That’s a little over seven times the size of Rio de Janeiro--Brazil’s most populous city.
Deforestation in Rondônia, Brazil
Below is an interactive map to explore deforestation in the state of Rondônia, Brazil from 2001 to 2018. Click and zoom to explore the map closer. Expand and collapse the legend in the bottom left corner. Return to the original extent using the home button in the bottom right.
Deforestation and Indigenous Territory Data Acquired from the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information . Rondônia municipalities layer created by Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística and obtained from the Stanford Digital Repository .
Fires in the Amazon
The Amazon rainforest is not a fire-prone ecosystem. Fires in this region can be largely attributed to deforestation, where clear cutting of timber and dead vegetation fuels and spreads fires rapidly. These fires do not occur naturally, but are rather ignited by people to clear land [8] .
Forest Fire in the State of Santo Antonio do Matupi, Brazil. © 2019 Associated Press
The increase in deforestation during 2019 had a significant impact on the spread of fires throughout the region. In 2019, 55% of the area that had been clear cut had also been burned--equalling over 5,000 square kilometers of land that was once rainforest [14] .
Fire Frequency in Rondônia, Brazil
Below is a map displaying the frequency fires in the state of Rondônia, Brazil from 2000 to 2017. The darker the shade of red, the more fires that have occurred in that area over the seventeen year time period. Expand the legend in the bottom right corner of the map. Zoom in to different portions of the map to explore where fires are most frequent.
Fire Frequency in Rondônia, Brazil. Fire Frequency and Indigenous Territory data acquired from the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information .
Amazon Fires Poison the Air in Brazil
Health Concerns
The principal public health threat regarding the burning of the Amazon is related to particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 millimeters in diameter (PM 2.5).
Additionally the World Health Organization states that smoke and ash inhalation from fires can lead to:
- eye, nose, throat, and lung irritation;
- decreased lung function, including coughing and wheezing;
- pulmonary inflammation, bronchitis, exacerbations of asthma, and other lung diseases; and
- exacerbation of cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure. [31]
PM 2.5 Concentration in the State of Rondônia, Brazil
Featured here is a map displaying the average noon-time concentration of PM 2.5 from July to October by municipality in Ronônia, Brazil. Click on each municipality to view the average PM 2.5 concentration. Concentration is reported in cubic meters.
PM 2.5 Concentration Rondônia. Concentration data obtained from the Sistema de Informações Ambientais .
Access to Health Care
Hospitalizations in 2019 due to fire-related respiratory illness in the Amazon. (Figure 5 from original report)
In a joint study conducted by Instituto de Estudos para Políticas de Saúde (IEPS), Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) and the Human Rights Watch, it was found that there were 2,195 hospitalizations attributed to fire-related respiratory illness in 2019. 70% of these hospitalizations were of infants or of people 60 years or older [42] .
Hospitalizations like these increase during the dry season (July-October),and remain high through the end of the calendar year. This is likely due to persistence of PM 2.5 in both the air and the bloodstreams of affected people. The number of reported hospitalizations is likely low due to the accessibility of hospitals and transportation.
Brazil’s Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) estimates that in the Amazon region, people have to travel an average of 370 and 471 kilometers to the nearest health facilities. The national average is 155 kilometers [45] .This distance is even greater for indigenous villages in the Amazon region. For 10% of villages, people have to travel between 700 and 1,079 kilometers to reach a hospital [47] .
Human Rights Obligations
Right to Health
Article 196 of Brazil’s constitution declares that it is the duty of the state to protect the right to health “by means of social and economic policies aimed at reducing the risk of illness and other hazards and at the universal and equal access to actions and services for its promotion, protection and recovery.” [130]
This right to health not only includes access to health care, but also includes creating and maintaining conditions conducive to good health [133] .
Right to a Healthy Environment
Article 225 of Brazil’s Constitution states “All have the right to an ecologically balanced environment, which is an asset of common use and essential to a healthy quality of life, and both the Government and the community shall have the duty to defend and preserve it for present and future generations.” [137]
Brazil is obligated to uphold the right to a healthy environment under the American Convention on Human Rights and its Additional Protocol in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. [138] Under this convention, the failure of the state to protect the environment, like illegal deforestation, is a violation of the right to a healthy environment. [140]
Recommendations
Given the outcomes of the preceding report, the Human Rights Watch provides these three main recommendations to the country of Brazil:
Brazil should take urgent steps to strengthen environmental enforcement in the Amazon rainforest as part of its human rights obligation to protect the right to health and the right to a healthy environment and to mitigate anthropogenic climate change
Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil
Brazil should take urgent steps to protect health by developing effective mechanisms that guarantee air quality in line with standards established by the World Health Organization (WHO)
Brazil should take urgent steps to ensure accountability for acts of violence related to illegal deforestation and fires in the Amazon, as well as to support and protect its forest defenders
This StoryMap was created as a part of a final project for IDCE 30262: Web Mapping & Open Source GIS at Clark University. The purpose of this project is to create a series of prototypes for a particular human rights organization. One required prototype is a StoryMap that tells a story about where the organization and what type of work they are doing there, with the goal of being an informational product for the general public. The entire series of prototypes constructed in this project can be found here .
This StoryMap is adapted from the Human Rights Watch Report "The Air is Unbearable" , that highlights the environmental and human injustice occurring in the Brazilian Amazon due to deforestation and fires in the region. Using a StoryMap such as this one highlights the joint research the Human Rights Watch is conducting in the region, and allows for readers to interact with data provided in the report. All information detailed in this report has footnotes that correspond with the citations in the original HRW report .
Footnotes
Expand to read footnotes in GoogleDocs.