Farmers, ranchers, and land speculators in the Brazilian Amazon are continuing to burn forests despite an official government ban on burning in the region, reveal photographs released today (17th July) by Greenpeace Brazil. Greenpeace Brazil campaigner Romulo Batista said the photos show the government needs to take more active measures to control fires and deforestation in the Amazon.
“As Bolsonaro’s 2019 fire moratorium already showed, banning fires alone doesn’t work,” said Batista in a statement. “Protecting the capacity to monitor and stop environmental destruction and to enforce the law – which Bolsonaro continues to systematically dismantle – is essential.” Greenpeace’s photos come a week after Brazil’s national space research institute INPE released data showing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased for the past 15 consecutive months, putting the 12-month rate 96% higher than when Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.
Experts expect the fire season to be especially bad this year due to rising deforestation. “Fires are associated with deforestation. In order to reduce their number, we have to reduce the deforested area,” Ane Alencar, science director of IPAM, the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon, told Mongabay. “Deforestation is increasing every month compared to last year, when it went up very much compared to previous years.” The rise in deforestation isn’t surprising to environmentalists given the Bolsonaro administration’s policies and rhetoric on the Amazon.
Source: Mongabay
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