Since the beginning of August, international media outlets have been perplexed with the recent fires in the Amazon rainforest, circulating the hashtag “PrayforAmazonia” all over social media. Known as the “lungs of the Earth,” the Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, covering much of northwestern Brazil and extending into various other South American countries. The importance of the Amazon rainforest is colossal, however, its recent fires have made people realize the extent to which the human impact of deforestation is threatening the rainforest that produces up to 20 percent of the world’s oxygen.
David Sirota, a political speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, refers to the Amazon rainforest as “our spaceship's life support system,” and this spaceship's life support system is on fire. In just 2019 alone, Brazil has experienced a breakout of more than 74,000 fires. In 2018, there were about 40,000 fires, and the reason rests solely on human impact, as there is a direct relationship between the outbreak of fires and deforestation. As put forth by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), the ten municipalities that had the most outbreaks of forest fires in 2019 also had the highest deforestation rates. Unfortunately, a deforested area is worth more in the market than a forested area. During deforestation, the trees are cut down and the land is burned so that it can be cleaned and prepared to house either livestock or be the site of agricultural practices. According to experts, a natural fire would not spread at the rate it currently is. In between the months of January and August, the number of fires has increased by 82 percent. As a matter of fact, forest fires can arise due to a few reasons, yet Ricardo Mello, manager of the Amazon Program of the "World Wide Fund for Nature" in Brazil, states that in the case of the Amazon, almost all of the fires are associated with human activity: “It's the men setting fire. There is no other scenario.” Deforestation happens year-round, however, in the driest months of June, July and August, the fires spread and increase to international proportions.
The fires in the Amazon also pose a serious threat to the populations that depend on it, both human and non-human. Fire spots in indigenous lands, for example, have doubled from 2018 to 2019. There were 5,242 fire spots detected by INPE in 2019, against 2,544 in 2018. In the case of the Karipuna tribe, the fires found at its border are a consequence of the farms surrounding the territory which are deforested and burned to house pasture for livestock. Besides, the Karipuna tribe consists of just about twenty individuals, and as they live in an area threatened by loggers, the tribe is actually under the threat of genocide, according to the Public Ministry. Moreover, indigenous lands make up 7 percent of the burnings, and 23 percent of the Amazon as a whole. On the subject of indigenous tribes, it is a fact that indigenous peoples have the habit of burning fields in the land, however, according to Ane Alencar of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), this has been going on for thousands of years. Therefore, the increase in outbreaks in these lands can only be explained by the invaders and/or strong periods of drought.
Brazil's Legal Amazon (BLA) is the largest socio-geographic division in Brazil, containing all nine states in the Amazon basin. Created in 1948 it seeks to plan the economic and social development of the Amazon region. Domestically, six of the nine states of the BLA said they had taken new measures in 2019 to curb deforestation and burning, including decreeing a state of emergency, internalizing inspection bases, and setting up their own geoprocessing bodies and local monitoring. In two states, Acre and Amazonas, governments even declared an emergency because of the burning. But even so, it is an extremely difficult task to monitor all sites of deforestation given the dimension of the forest.
Nevertheless, deforestation isn’t a new or modern practice. Why then has this issue only just become regarded as “important?” The truth lies in the fact that people started to understand the complexity and consequences of deforestation once it affected the richest Brazilian state, São Paulo. On August 19, the population in the Southeast region of the country saw the sky turn black at about 3 PM. Talk of the incident quickly became one of the most trending topics online. At the same time, the black smoke reaches the rain clouds and residents began collecting dark-colored rainwater, which also rapidly spread all over social media. The Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo (USP) tested that rainwater, and identified the presence of “reteno,” a substance derived from biomass burning and considered a burn marker. Consequently, with São Paulo being affected, the fires in the Amazon were noticed quicker by the international community and became an international topic as world leaders manifested themselves and started pressing Brazil on acting upon it.
“The fire that devastates the Amazon rainforest is not only sad, but also an international crisis,” stated United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “The magnitude of the fires is worrying and threatens not only Brazil and the other affected countries, but also the whole world,” said Steffen Seibert, Merkel's representative. Protests at Brazilian embassies all around the world took place, celebrities and spokespersons cried out for action, yet Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, isn’t facilitating change to happen at the pace that it needs to. Due to a personal feud with French President Emmanuel Macron and allegations that all international support is an attack on Brazil’s sovereignty, Brazil has rejected the $22.2 million package from the G-7 nations to help fight the fires. The feud escalated to a point where President Macron has threatened to block the free-trade agreement, Mercosur-E.U., due to President Bolsonaro’s policies. Despite the aid rejection, President Bolsonaro has been open to receiving support from Israel with their airplanes and pilots experienced in fighting fires, as well as complying with President Trump’s willingness to help. This ambivalence shows how rising nationalism, alongside President Bolsonaro’s new government, is hindering international responses to global issues like climate change.
The fires in the Amazon demonstrate a multitude of things about the current global system. First, while it is known how globalization facilitates the spread of information at an increasingly fast pace, as soon as the information reaches a few nations, responsive actions are not that quick. Furthermore, the fires in the Amazon showed the international community that even weeks after multiple fires were taking place, the world’s richest nations pledged to give $22 million, however, in less than 24 hours after the Notre-Dame caught on fire, $945 million have been pledged. The Amazon fires are just an example of how man-made tragedies which directly affect the global population, aren’t dealt with with the same vigor as other devastations. They have shown that pride over sovereignty seems to be more important than the survival of the world’s largest forest.