The 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires season saw a year-to-year surge in fires occurring in the Amazon rainforest and Amazon biome within Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru during that year's Amazonian tropical dry season. Fires normally occur around the dry season as slash-and-burn methods are used to clear the forest to make way for agriculture, livestock, logging, and mining, leading to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Such activity is generally illegal within these nations, but enforcement of environmental protection can be lax. The increased rates of fire counts in 2019 led to international concern about the fate of the Amazon rainforest, which is the world's largest terrestrial carbon dioxide sink and plays a significant role in mitigating global warming.
The increasing rates were first reported by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, INPE) in June and July 2019 through satellite monitoring systems, but international attention was drawn to the situation by August 2019 when NASA corroborated INPE's findings, and smoke from the fires, visible from satellite imagery, darkened the city of São Paulo despite being thousands of kilometers from the Amazon. As of August 29, 2019, INPE reported more than 80,000 fires across all of Brazil, a 77% year-to-year increase for the same tracking period, with more than 40,000 in the Brazil's Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal or BLA), which contains 60% of the Amazon. Similar year-to-year increases in fires were subsequently reported in Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, with the 2019 fire counts within each nation of over 19,000, 11,000 and 6,700, respectively, as of August 29, 2019. It is estimated that over 906 thousand hectares (2.24×10^6 acres; 9,060 km2; 3,500 mi2) of forest within the Amazon biome has been lost to fires in 2019. In addition to the impact on global climate, the fires created environmental concerns from the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) within the fires' emissions, potential impacts on the biodiversity of the Amazon, and threats to indigenous tribes that live within the forest. Ecologists estimated that the dieback from the Amazon rainforest due to the fires could cost Brazil US$957 billion to US$3.5 trillion over a 30-year period.
The increased rate of fires in Brazil has raised the most concerns as international leaders, particularly French president Emmanuel Macron, and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) attributed these to Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's pro-business policies that had weakened environmental protections and have encouraged deforestation of the Amazon after he took office in January 2019. Bolsonaro initially remained ambivalent and rejected international calls to take action, asserting that the criticism was sensationalist. Following increased pressure at the 45th G7 summit and a threat to reject the pending European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement, Bolsonaro dispatched over 44,000 Brazilian troops and allocated funds to fight the fires, and later signed a decree to prevent such fires for a sixty-day period.
Other Amazonian countries have been affected by the wildfires in higher or lesser degree. The number of hectares of Bolivian rainforest affected by the wildfires were roughly equal to those of Brazil, being the area of Bolivia only about one-eighth of Brazil's. Bolivian president Evo Morales was similarly blamed for past policies that encouraged deforestation, Morales has also taken proactive measures to fight the fires and seek aid from other countries. At the G7 summit, Macron negotiated with the other nations to allocate US$22 million for emergency aid to the Amazonian countries affected by the fires.
The 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires season saw a year-to-year surge in fires occurring in the Amazon rainforest and Amazon biome within Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru during that year's Amazonian tropical dry season. Fires normally occur around the dry season as slash-and-burn methods are used to clear the forest to make way for agriculture, livestock, logging, and mining, leading to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Such activity is generally illegal within these nations, but enforcement of environmental protection can be lax. The increased rates of fire counts in 2019 led to international concern about the fate of the Amazon rainforest, which is the world's largest terrestrial carbon dioxide sink and plays a significant role in mitigating global warming.
The increasing rates were first reported by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, INPE) in June and July 2019 through satellite monitoring systems, but international attention was drawn to the situation by August 2019 when NASA corroborated INPE's findings, and smoke from the fires, visible from satellite imagery, darkened the city of São Paulo despite being thousands of kilometers from the Amazon. As of August 29, 2019, INPE reported more than 80,000 fires across all of Brazil, a 77% year-to-year increase for the same tracking period, with more than 40,000 in the Brazil's Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal or BLA), which contains 60% of the Amazon. Similar year-to-year increases in fires were subsequently reported in Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, with the 2019 fire counts within each nation of over 19,000, 11,000 and 6,700, respectively, as of August 29, 2019. It is estimated that over 906 thousand hectares (2.24×106 acres; 9,060 km2; 3,500 mi2) of forest within the Amazon biome has been lost to fires in 2019. In addition to the impact on global climate, the fires created environmental concerns from the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) within the fires' emissions, potential impacts on the biodiversity of the Amazon, and threats to indigenous tribes that live within the forest. Ecologists estimated that the dieback from the Amazon rainforest due to the fires could cost Brazil US$957 billion to US$3.5 trillion over a 30-year period.
The increased rate of fires in Brazil has raised the most concerns as international leaders, particularly French president Emmanuel Macron, and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) attributed these to Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's pro-business policies that had weakened environmental protections and have encouraged deforestation of the Amazon after he took office in January 2019. Bolsonaro initially remained ambivalent and rejected international calls to take action, asserting that the criticism was sensationalist. Following increased pressure at the 45th G7 summit and a threat to reject the pending European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement, Bolsonaro dispatched over 44,000 Brazilian troops and allocated funds to fight the fires, and later signed a decree to prevent such fires for a sixty-day period.
Other Amazonian countries have been affected by the wildfires in higher or lesser degree. The number of hectares of Bolivian rainforest affected by the wildfires were roughly equal to those of Brazil, being the area of Bolivia only about one-eighth of Brazil's. Bolivian president Evo Morales was similarly blamed for past policies that encouraged deforestation, Morales has also taken proactive measures to fight the fires and seek aid from other countries. At the G7 summit, Macron negotiated with the other nations to allocate US$22 million for emergency aid to the Amazonian countries affected by the fires.
Amazon forest and deforestation
There are 671 million acres of Amazon rainforest. Human-driven deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has been a major concern for decades as the rainforest's impact on the global climate has been measured. From a global climate perspective, the Amazon has been the world's largest carbon dioxide sink, and estimated to capture up to 25% of global carbon dioxide generation into plants and other biomass. Without this sink, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would increase and contribute towards higher global temperatures, thus making the viability of the Amazon a global concern. Further, when the forest is lost through fire, additional carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere, and could potentially contribute significantly to the total carbon dioxide content. The flora also generates significant quantities of water vapor through transpiration which travel large distances to other parts of South America via atmospheric rivers and contribute to the precipitation in these areas. Due to ongoing global climate change, environmental scientists have raised concerns that the Amazon could reach a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly die out, the land becoming more savanna than forest, under certain climate change conditions which are exacerbated by anthropogenic activities.
Human-driven deforestation of the Amazon is used to clear land for agriculture, livestock, and mining, and for its lumber. Most forest is typically cleared using slash-and-burn processes; huge amounts of biomass are removed by first pulling down the trees in the Amazon using bulldozers and giant tractors during the wet season (November through June), followed by torching the tree trunks several months later in the dry season (July through October). Fires are most common in July through August. In some cases, workers performing the burn are unskilled, and may inadvertently allow these fires to spread. While most countries in the Amazon do have laws and environmental enforcement against deforestation, these are not well enforced, and much of the slash-and-burn activity is done illegally.
Deforestation leads to a large number of observed fires across the Amazon during the dry season, usually tracked by satellite data. While it is possible for naturally occurring wildfires to occur in the Amazon, the chances are far less likely to occur, compared to those in California or in Australia. Even with global warming, spontaneous fires in the Amazon cannot come from warm weather alone, but warm weather is capable of exacerbating the fires once started as there will be drier biomass available for the fire to spread. Alberto Setzer of INPE estimated that 99% of the wildfires in the Amazon basin are a result of human actions, either on purpose or accidentally. Man-made fires in the Amazon also tend to elevate their smoke into the higher atmosphere due to the more intense burn of the dry biomass, compared with naturally occurring wildfires. Further evidence of the fires being caused by human activity is due to their clustering near roads and existing agricultural areas rather than remote parts of the forest.
On November 18, 2019, Brazilian authorities announced the official deforestation figures, based on the PRODES satellite monitoring system for the 2019 forest year—from August 1, 2018, to July 31, 2019. The rate of deforestation was the "worst in more than a decade" with 970,000 hectares (2,400,000 acres) lost.
Amazon fires can be separated into three broad categories. First, deforestation-related fires are those used to prepare the area for agriculture after a primary forest being felled and the vegetation left to dry. Second, there are those agricultural burns, when fires are used to clear existing pastureland and/or by smallholders and traditional people in rotational agriculture. Finally, the previous fire types can escape beyond intended limits and invade standing forests. When a forest burns for the first time, fire intensity is usually low and flames are mostly restricted to the understory while repeated fire events have higher intensity. Forest fires are a threat to the Amazonian biodiversity and jeopardize the ability of forest trees to mitigate climate change by storing carbon. When studying Amazonian fires, it is important to consider the marked spatial differences in precipitation patterns across the Amazon Basin, which does not have a single dry season.
Fires in Brazil
Past deforestation and fires in Brazil
Brazil's role in deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has been a significant issue during the 1930s, as 60% of the Amazon is contained within Brazil, designated as the Brazil's Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal, BLA). Since the 1970s, Brazil has consumed approximately 12 percent of the forest, representing roughly 77.7 million ha (192 million acres)—an area larger than that of the US state of Texas. Most of the deforestation has been for natural resources for the logging industry and land clearing for agricultural and mining use. Forest removal to make way for cattle ranching was the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the mid-1960s on. The Amazon region has become the largest cattle ranching territory in the world. According to the World Bank, some 80% of deforested land is used for cattle ranching. Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture. According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), "between 1990 and 2001 the percentage of Europe's processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40 to 74 percent" and by 2003 "for the first time ever, the growth in Brazilian cattle production, 80 percent of which was in the Amazon[,] was largely export driven." The Brazilian states of Pará, Mato Grosso, and Rondônia, located along the southern border of the Amazon rainforest, are in what is called the "deforestation arc".
Deforestation within Brazil is partially driven by growing demand for beef and soy exports, particularly to China and Hong Kong. In the first seven months of 2019, soy exports to China rose by 18% due to trading tensions between the United States and China. Brazil is one of the largest exporters of beef, accounting for more than 20% of global trade of the commodity. Brazil exported over 1.6 million tonnes of beef in 2018, the highest volume in recorded history. Brazil's cattle herd has increased by 56% over the last two decades. Ranchers wait until the dry season to slash-and-burn to give time for the cattle to graze. Soybean production has increased from 75.32 million metric tons in 2010/11 to 118.8 million metric tons in 2018/19. The Amazon accounts for 14 million of the 284 million acres of soy plantations in Brazil. While slash-and-burn can be controlled, unskilled farmers may end up causing wildfires. Wildfires have increased as the agricultural sector has pushed into the Amazon basin and spurred deforestation. In recent years, "land-grabbers" (grileiros) have been illegally cutting deep into the forest in "Brazil's indigenous territories and other protected forests throughout the Amazon".
Past data from INPE has shown the number of fires with the BLA from January to August in any year to be routinely higher than 60,000 fires from 2002 to 2007 and as high as 90,000 in 2003. Fire counts have generally been higher in years of drought (2007 and 2010), which are often coupled with El Niño events.
Within international attention on the protection of the Amazon around the early 2000s, Brazil took a more proactive approach to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. In 2004, the Brazilian government had established the Federal Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAM), with the goal to reduce the rate of deforestation through land use regulation, environmental monitoring, and sustainable activities, promoted through partnerships at the federal and private level, and legal penalties for violations. Brazil also invested in more effective measures to fight fires, including fire-fighting airplanes in 2012. By 2014, USAID was teaching the indigenous people how to fight fires. As a result of enforcement of PPCDAM, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped 83.5% of their 2004 rates by 2012. However, in 2014, Brazil fell into an economic crisis, and as part of that recovery, pushed heavily on its exports of beef and soy to help bolster its economy, which caused a reversal in the falling deforestation rates. The Brazilian government has been defunding scientific research since the economic crisis.
To support PPCDAM, the INPE began developing systems to monitor the Amazon rainforest. One early effort was the Amazon Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project (PRODES), which is a highly detailed satellite imagery-based approach to calculate wildfires and deforestation losses on an annual basis. In 2015, INPE launched five complementary projects as part of the Terra Brasilis project to monitor deforestation closer to real-time. Among these include the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER) satellite alert system, allowing them to capture incidents of wildfires in 15-day cycles. The daily data is published on the regularly updated Brazilian Environmental Institute government website, and later corroborated with the annual and more accurate PRODES data.
By December 2017, INPE had completed a modernization process and had expanded its system to analyze and share data on forest fires. It launched its new TerraMA2Q platform—software which adapts fire-monitoring data software including the "occurrence of irregular fires". Although the INPE was able to provide regional fire data since 1998, the modernization increased access. Agencies that monitor and fight fires include the Brazilian Federal Environment and Renewable Resources Agency (IBAMA), as well as state authorities. The INPE receives its images daily from 10 foreign satellites, including the Terra and Aqua satellites—part of the NASA's Earth Observation System (EOS). Combined, these systems are able to capture the number of fires on a daily basis, but this number does not directly measure the area of forest lost to these fires; instead, this is done with fortnightly imaging data to compare the current state of the forest with reference data to estimate acreage lost.
Jair Bolsonaro was elected as President of Brazil in October 2018 and took office in January 2019, after which he and his ministries changed governmental policies to weaken protection of the rainforest and make it favorable for farmers to continue practices of slash-and-burn clearing, thus accelerating the deforestation from previous years. Land-grabbers had used Bolsonaro's election to extend their activities into cutting in the land of the previously isolated Apurinã people in Amazonas where the "world's largest standing tracts of unbroken rainforest" are found. Upon entering office, Bolsonaro cut US$23 million from Brazil's environmental enforcement agency, making it difficult for the agency to regulate deforestation efforts. Bolsonaro and his ministers had also segmented the environmental agency, placing part of its control under the agricultural ministry, which is led by the country's farming lobby, weakened protections on natural reserves and territories belonging to indigenous people, and encouraged businesses to file counter-land claims against regions managed by sustainable forestry practices.