The Amazon rainforest is on fire.
Between 2-3pm in the city of São Paulo — Brazil’s largest — on Tuesday, the sun was blocked out by smoke clouds that had travelled over 2,700 km from fires in the world’s largest rainforest.
The volume of smoke, which was visible from space, points to an unprecedented ecological crisis for the rainforest, which serves as a vital carbon store for the earth as well as home to one in ten of earth’s species.
This is the sky of the biggest city in the country of Brazil, São Paulo at 2-3 P.M.
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 20, 2019
The smoke of the burning Amazon Rainforest has covered it entirely.
OUR PLANET IS DETERIORATING BEFORE OUR EYES AS A RESULT OF CLIMATE CHANGE!
THIS IS FRIGHTENING! pic.twitter.com/Xygb4NeikW
On Wednesday, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — whose environmental policy towards the Amazon has resulted in one football field of forest being cleared every minute — said that the fires were likely caused by NGOs. According to him, “everything indicates" that NGOs "set fire" to the forest, though he refused to offer evidence for the claim, saying that since his government slashed NGO funding, they were motivated to do to bring infamy to his government.
According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), fires in the Amazon this year have surged by 84 per cent compared to the same time period last year. Coincidentally, this is nearly the amount by which deforestation had gone up between June of 2018 and June of 2019.
Only weeks ago, Bolsonaro had sacked the head of the National Institute for Space Research for publishing deforestation data that showed an increase of 88 per cent. Bolsonaro justified the move, telling reporters that "With all the devastation that you are accusing us of doing... the Amazon region would already have been extinguished.”
Farmers often use slash-and-burn techniques to clear swathes of land in the Amazon, resulting in an annual fire season that had not existed before, according to a NASA report in 2007.
INPE estimates that 4,699 square kilometres of forest were devastated this year compared to 2,810 square kilometres the previous year.
The spate of fires in the Amazon prompted the Amazonas state to declare a state of emergency on August 12.
The 21st century has been harsh to the rainforest. As early as 2006, the WWF warned that a combination of climate change and deforestation was making the Amazon a drier place, one that is more prone to forest fires due to the growing abundance of dead wood and dry climates.
According to Mongobay, the Amazon has lost 792,051 square kilometres of forest since the 1970s — an area equivalent to that of the country of Turkey.
The hashtag #SaveAmazonia was trending on Twitter on Wednesday.
