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).
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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.
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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).
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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.