In Brazil, tens of thousands of fires continue to threaten major cities, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Fueled by the worst drought ever recorded in the country, forest fires continued to evolve on Saturday, September 14, in key natural areas for biodiversity such as the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Pantanal. “The federal government, in cooperation with state and municipal governments, is working to fight the fires,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote Friday evening on the Bluesky social network.
The authorities believe that these fires are of criminal origin or linked to agricultural activity and President Lula called on the population to denounce those responsible. The government announced on Wednesday a strengthening of sanctions.
Image: Eraldo Peres/AP/picture alliance
A consequence of climate change
Based on data collected by satellites, the National Institute for Space Investigations recorded 49,266 fires on the territory during the first 12 days of September, which is already more than the number recorded for the whole of September 2023 (46,486). As of midnight on Thursday, 60.7% of the fires recorded in September in South America were burning in Brazil, according to the same source.
These tens of thousands of fires are spreading all the more easily as Brazil is going through its worst period of drought since records began. Climate change caused by human activities facilitates extreme weather conditions such as droughts and heat waves, which are conducive to the spread of major fires. The number and intensity of extreme forest fires, the most destructive and polluting, more than doubled worldwide between 2003 and 2023, according to a new study published in June in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
These fires, in turn, emit greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. In less than two weeks in September, Brazil emitted four megatons (four million tons) of carbon dioxide, Mark Parrington of the European Copernicus Observatory told AFP. Worldwide, the fires generated between 10 and 15 megatons of CO2 in total, he said.
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