Wildfires and Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Overview, Trends, Challenges, & Next Steps

Overview

Brazil encompasses around 65% of the 1.4 billion acre Amazon basin within its borders (Ortiz, 2019).

In 2019, the region drew international attention for the devastating wildfires that were spreading through the Amazon.

Wildfires are common during the dry season, but the increase to this degree resulted from a decrease in enforcement of forest law, illegal deforestation practices, and infiltration of indigenous lands (Ortiz, 2019).

Since 1970, more than 20% of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has been cleared to convert the land to cattle ranches or growing crops such as soybeans (Ortiz, 2019).

When President Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, he decreed the Amazon “open for business” to promote mining and ranching in the previously protected area (Ortiz, 2019).

Trees are either logged or burned in the process of deforestation. It is the intentional burning practice that has gotten out of hand and engulfed the Brazilian Amazon in flames.

The clearing of the Amazon forest not only destroys the rich biodiversity that exists, but also has larger implications for both Brazil but as well as the world as well.

One fifth of the world’s land species are found in the Amazon forest (NASA Earth Observatory, 2019).

This rainforest also acts as an immense carbon sink of the earth, storing carbon from the atmosphere, which reduces the collective carbon footprint (NASA, 2019; Peng et al., 2020).


Deforestation and Wildfire Trends

Deforestation in Brazil was decreasing between 2004 - 2012 in accordance with national policies including the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazonia (PPCDAm), and The National Policy on Climate Change (NPCC). These policies aimed to reduce carbon emission by 36-39% by 2020, and to reduce deforestation by 80% by 2020 compared to the average rate between 1996 to 2005 (Ferreira & Mendes, 2016).

Figure 1. Official deforestation rates for the Brazilian Amazon (Silva Junior et al., 2021).

Yet, as observed in Figure 1, deforestation has been on the rise since 2013, and the year 2020 marked the highest deforestation rate in a decade. In 2020, deforestation increased by 45% compared to that of 2018 and 9.5% compared to 2019, which is 182% above the set target (Silva Junior et al., 2021).    

The increase in land clearing is attributed to the controversial revision of the Forest Code in 2012, which allowed landowners in the Amazon to deforest their land up to 20% (Silva Junior et al., 2021).

Figure 2. Number of wildfires (in thousands) in the Legal Amazon area in Brazil from 2005 to 2020 (Pasquali, 2020).

Although Brazil experienced worse fires in the early 2000s, environmental protections to combat deforestation and exploitation of the Amazon have not been upheld in recent years, and the Brazilian Amazon is experiencing an increase in fires once again. See Figure 2 (Pasquali, 2020).


Current Situation

Satellite showing current thermal hotspots and fire activity in real time.


Challenges

Indigenous Lands and Deforestation

Indigenous territories in Brazil account for 25% of the Brazilian Amazon, and the protected land serves as environmental safeguard (Ortiz, 2019).

Currently, indigenous land is under threat as the government tries to revoke land rights through intimidation and violence.

As shown here, deforestation is occurring on indigenous lands (Ortiz, 2019).

Cattle Ranching and Fire Density

Brazil’s agricultural land is expected to expand faster than any country in the world until 2050, and potentially becoming the largest agricultural producer in the mid-2030’s (Delgado Assad et al., 2020).

This map shows fire density is higher in areas that have been deforested for agricultural land use.

Given the current trend, most of the agricultural land expansion is projected to happen in the Amazon, leading to further fire density.

Fire Risk by State

The maps here compare the number of detected forest fires between 2015 and 2020.

The northern states of Roraima, Acre, Rondônia and Amazonas were the hardest hit by increasing wildfires in 2019 (BBC News, 2019).

Amazonas, Brazil’s largest state, called a state of emergency at that time. Deforestation due to expansion of agricultural land has brought more infrastructure development to the region.

There has been a noticeable upsurge in fires along major roads in the central part of Brazil’s Amazon region (BBC News, 2019).

Fire Increase by State

This map represents the percentage difference of detected forest fires between 2015 and 2020.

Note that states that are deep in the legal Amazon, such as Amazonas, Acre, and Rondônia have 50-200% increase in forest fires, whereas Pará and Tocantins experienced the opposite.

Pará and Tocantins are already heavily deforested and experienced severe forest fires in 2015.

Next Steps

1. International Pressure:

Increase international attention put pressure on Brazil’s government to address the wildfires threatening the Amazon.

In September 2019, Brazil experienced higher rainfall totals than usual, and a two-month ban on clearing land through burning enforced by the military led to a decline in wildfires (Ortiz, 2019).

Next Steps

2. Enforce Environmental Law:

A decrease in law enforcement in the Amazon pushed an agenda of deforestation for economic gain.

Brazil’s environment agency has official data showing that from the start of the Bolsonaro administration in January 2019 to August 2019, fines for illegal land clearing declined by a third compared to the previous year (BBC News, 2019).

Next Steps

3. Conserving Indigenous Lands:

In Brazil, Indigenous lands have been one of the most effective land uses in protecting the Amazon rainforest from large-scale agriculture, cattle ranching, wildfire, and deforestation in general (Constantino et al., 2018).

Conserving indigenous lands, therefore, are extremely important in combating climate change in an ecological point of view since the indigenous lands in Amazon retain 25% of all terrestrial carbon stock and 50% of the earth's remaining tropical forests(Begotti & Peres, 2019).

References

BBC News. (2019, August 24). Amazon fires: Fines for environmental crimes drop under Bolsonaro. Retrieved from BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49460022

Begotti, R. A., & Peres, C. A. (2020). Rapidly escalating threats to the biodiversity and ethnocultural capital of Brazilian Indigenous Lands. Land Use Policy, 96, 104694.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104694 

Chen, W. (2020, April 23). WWF video linking beef consumption to deforestation causes outrage in China. Retrieved from Dialogo China: https://dialogochino.net/en/agriculture/34983-wwf-video-linking-beef-deforestation-outrages-some-in-china/

Constantino, P. de A. L., Benchimol, M., & Antunes, A. P. (2018). Designing Indigenous Lands in Amazonia: Securing indigenous rights and wildlife conservation through hunting management. Land Use Policy, 77, 652–660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.06.016 

Dwyer, H. (2016, October 17). Wildlife Species in Brazil. Retrieved from Chimu Blog: https://www.chimuadventures.com/blog/2016/10/wildlife-species-in-brazil/

Ferreira, H. S., Serraglio, D. A., & Mendes, R. L. M. (2016). National Policy on Climate Change and the Protection of the Amazon Forest. Environmental Policy and Law, 46(6), 419–424.

Gilpin, E. (2019, August 31). “The Amazon Stays, Bolsonaro Goes”: Protesters in Brazil Demand Action on Rainforest Fires. Retrieved from Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/the-amazon-stays-bolsonaro-goes-protesters-in-brazil-demand-action-on-rainforest-fires/

Mapping the Amazon. (2019, September 26). Mapping the Amazon. NASA Earth Observatory.  https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145649/mapping-the-amazon 

International, S., & International, S. (n.d.). Brazilian Indians. Retrieved March 20, 2021, from  https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/brazilian 

Ortiz, J. L. (2019, October 18). There were 19,925 fire outbreaks last month, and 'more fires' are in the future. Retrieved from USA Today:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/18/amazon-rainforest-still-burning-more-fires-future/4011238002/ 

Pasquali, M. (2020, August 21). Number of wildfires in the Legal Amazon area in Brazil from 2005 to 2020. Retrieved from Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1044328/number-wildfires-legal-amazon/

Peng, W., Sonne, C., Lam, S. S., Ok, Y. S., & Alstrup, A. K. O. (2020). The ongoing cut-down of the Amazon rainforest threatens the climate and requires global tree planting projects: A short review. Environmental Research, 181, 108887.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2019.108887 

Silva Junior, C. H. L., Pessôa, A. C. M., Carvalho, N. S., Reis, J. B. C., Anderson, L. O., & Aragão, L. E. O. C. (2021). The Brazilian Amazon deforestation rate in 2020 is the greatest of the decade. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(2), 144–145.  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01368-x 

Scherer, G. (2019, October 1). Bolsonaro’s Brazil unlikely to achieve Paris Agreement goals: experts. Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/bolsonaros-brazil-unlikely-to-achieve-paris-agreement-goals-experts/

Twitter. (2019, August 22). Emmanuel Macron. Retrieved from Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1164617008962527232/photo/1

World Resources Institute, Delgado Assad, E., Claudio Costa, L., Martins, S., Calmon, M., Feltran-Barbieri, R., Campanili, M., & Nobre, C. A. (2020, April). ROLE OF ABC PLAN AND PLANAVEG IN THE ADAPTATION OF BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURE TO CLIMATE CHANGE. World Resources Institute.  https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33549.56803 

Data:

Situação atual - Programa Queimadas - INPE. (n.d.). Governo Do Brasil. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/portal-static/situacao-atual/

Figure 1. Official deforestation rates for the Brazilian Amazon (Silva Junior et al., 2021).

Figure 2. Number of wildfires (in thousands) in the Legal Amazon area in Brazil from 2005 to 2020 (Pasquali, 2020).