The Amazon is burning.
Bolsonaro
says his critics are setting the fires, to make him look bad.
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list By Terrence McCoy August 22 at 5:55 PM RIO DE JANEIRO —
The signs of
crisis are everywhere. Smoke blankets Sao Paulo, the Western Hemisphere’s
biggest city, turning day to night. The viral campaign #PrayForTheAmazon washes
across social media. A government research agency warns that the rate of fires
is skyrocketing. But Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the man most able to
stanch the crisis unfolding in the Amazon, isn’t just dismissing the problem.
He’s suggesting it’s being staged to make him look bad. Asked about the surging
fires in the world’s most precious forest — the area scorched has more than
doubled in the past two years — he accused his critics of setting them, to
“call attention” against his government. “The fire was started, it seemed, in
strategic locations,” he told reporters this week. “There are images of the entire
Amazon. How can that be? Everything indicates that people went there to film
and then to set fires. That is my feeling.” That there’s disagreement over even
the most basic of facts — what’s causing the infernos and how they can be
stopped — has further complicated a response to the environmental crisis
unfolding in a rainforest that scientists say is essential to curbing global
warming. The Amazon — 2.12 million square miles across Brazil, Colombia, Peru
and other countries — serves as the lungs of the planet, accounting for a
quarter of the carbon dioxide absorbed by the world’s forests. Now it’s under
threat as never before. A growing agricultural sector, rampant deforestation
and climate change have yielded a disturbing new reality: The world’s largest
rainforest — soaked by hundreds of inches of rain each year — is catching fire.
As the peak dry season approaches, and environmental safeguards are relaxed,
there is pervasive worry the damage will spread. “The forest is becoming like
Swiss cheese, with all of these roads and things crossing in the forest,” said
Brazilian environmental scientist Carlos Nobre. “The more the forest becomes
degraded, the more the forest will become vulnerable to forest fires.”
8/23/2019 Amazon fires: Brazil's Bolsonaro blames nongovernment organizations
for fires –
The
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-amazon-is-burning-bolsonaro-says-his-critics-are-setting-the-fires-to-make-him-look-bad…
2/4 The
leading force of degradation is deforestation, much of it illegal. The rate at
which the Amazon is losing canopy has grown since the inauguration of
Bolsonaro, a former fringe lawmaker who campaigned in part on promises to open
up the rainforest for development. In June alone, an area half the size of
Rhode Island was lost, government statistics show. Once the trees are cut down,
the easiest way to dispose of them is to let them dry for months in the sun —
and then set them ablaze. More than three-quarters of the deforestation is the
result of cattle farming and soy production, according to the advocacy group
Amazon Watch. Laborers often use fire to clear the land. Droughts also play a
role. These occur naturally, but scientists say climate change and
deforestation are making them more frequent — and more severe. The result? “I
cannot remember any other big fire episode like this one,” said Vitor Gomes, an
environmental scientist at the Federal University of Para. “Attributing the
whole episode to natural causes only is practically impossible,” he said. “We
are not even in the middle of the drying season.” Since January, the Brazilian
Amazon has suffered 74,155 fires, according to the country’s National Institute
for Space Research, an 85 percent jump from the same point last year. In the
last two years, the area razed by fire has more than doubled, from 3,168 square
miles during the first seven months of 2017 to 7,192 square miles during the
same period this year, the space institute reported. Bolsonaro is trying to
lift Brazil out of years of economic stagnation. But his plans for the Amazon —
and his recent behavior — are isolating him internationally, and threatening
Brazil’s position as a global leader on the environment. In recent weeks, he
accused the director of the space institute of lying about rising deforestation
— and fired him. Then his environmental ministry announced it would take away
foreign aid from projects to fight deforestation and instead fund cattle and
soybean farmers.
8/23/2019
Amazon fires: Brazil's Bolsonaro blames nongovernment organizations for fires -
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-amazon-is-burning-bolsonaro-says-his-critics-are-setting-the-fires-to-make-him-look-bad…
3/4 Germany
and Norway responded by cutting tens of millions of dollars in aid. Bolsonaro
told German Chancellor Angela Merkel to mind her own business, and pointed out
that Norway hunts whales. On Thursday, Bolsonaro complained Brazil didn’t have
the money to fight the Amazon’s forest fires. “There aren’t the resources,” he
told reporters. He then reiterated that nongovernmental organizations were “the
biggest suspects” in the fires. His environmental minister, meanwhile, was
booed and heckled at a climate conference in the northern city of Salvador.
“Brazil’s climate change denial is isolating the country,” said Mauricio
Santoro, a professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro’s state
university. “It is a theme of the global agenda, and Brazil plays a central
role, whether it wants to or not, because of the Amazon, because of its
biodiversity.” And because of what’s happening now. The fires, fueled by winds
from an incoming cold front, produced scenes this week both startling and
ominous: smoke darkening the midday skies over Sao Paulo and other cities. Day
became night, leading to confusion, then jokes — and then outrage, in Brazil
and beyond. The hashtag #PrayForTheAmazon exploded on social media, along with
images of the forest burning and animals cowering — and demands for more
action. “Terrifying to think that the Amazon . . . has been on fire . . . with
literally NO media coverage whatsoever! Why?” the actor Leonardo DiCaprio asked
on Instagram. The post collected more than 3 million likes. The implications of
a burning Amazon are global. One of the best defenses against climate change,
the rainforest is quickly approaching what scientists warn is a tipping point —
between 20 and 25 percent deforestation — when the damage done to the forest
could become irreversible. What has alarmed researchers most is that Brazil is
not in the midst of any significant drought. The driest part of the year — when
the forest is most susceptible to fire — is still to come. But already the
forest is burning. “It is disturbing that forest fires have been in evidence in
a year that is not one of extreme drought,” said Philip Fearnside, an ecologist
at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia. “The continual advance of
logging makes ever more forest vulnerable to fire, as does the cumulative
effect of past forest fires.”
8/23/2019
Amazon fires: Brazil's Bolsonaro blames nongovernment organizations for fires -
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-amazon-is-burning-bolsonaro-says-his-critics-are-setting-the-fires-to-make-him-look-bad…
4/4 Ricardo
Mello, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Amazon program, struggled to
find the words to describe his pessimism on Thursday. “It’s historically — this
is highest number [of fires] I’ve ever seen,” he said. To him, what was most
concerning was that the country’s president not only didn’t seem to grasp the
consequences of inaction, but he was also transforming an environmental crisis
into a dispute he was having with NGOs. “In cities in the Amazon, airplanes are
grounded because there is so much smoke that they can’t take off,” he said.
“The situation is very serious. . . . The government has to do something.”
Marina Lopes in Sao Paulo and Andrew Freedman in
Washington contributed to this report. Terrence McCoy Terrence McCoy covers
social issues in urban and rural America. He joined The Washington Post in 2014
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