Data on fires in the Amazon

- The trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), is the biggest trade treaty ever negotiated. Signed a year ago, the US$19 trillion deal’s ratification could fail due to Brazil’s refusal to respond.- At the end of June, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that his nation will not make “any trade agreement with countries that do not respect the Paris [Climate] Agreement,” a direct reference to the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who has pursued an aggressive policy to develop the Amazon.- The Dutch parliament, Austria, Belgium, Ireland and Luxembourg, plus some EU parliamentarians, and NGOs are opposed to the deal, saying it brings unfair competition to EU farmers and accelerates Amazon deforestation. French and Brazilian business interests and diplomats meet this week to try and settle differences.- Brazil’s Bolsonaro has so far been unmoved by all these objections. While the government plans to launch a PR campaign to convince the EU to ratify the trade agreement, it continues pressing forward with plans to allow industrial mining and agribusiness intrusion into Amazon indigenous reserves and conserved areas.

- Peaking fires in the world’s rainforests combined with the global COVID-19 pandemic threaten to create a devastating public health crisis, experts warn.- The fires typically follow recent deforestation, as farmers and ranchers burn brush and trees to make way for crops and livestock.- Soot from the fires causes severe respiratory problems and exacerbates existing conditions, health researchers say. The uptick in the need for treatment could overwhelm already-strained hospitals in the Amazon and Southeast Asia.- Researchers say that solutions exist, involving government enforcement, consumer demand for deforestation-free products, and company commitments to halt the destruction of forests. Now what’s needed is political will.

- Scientists at the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, an initiative of the Amazon Conservation Association, have discovered the first major fire of 2020 in the Brazilian Amazon.- The team has developed a new app that uses aerosol and fire alert data gathered from satellites to pinpoint significant fires across the world’s largest rainforest.- Another report, led by scientists at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE), indicates that the continued rise in cases of COVID-19 combined with the approach of fire season in the Amazon could overwhelm the Amazon region’s clinics due to the increase in respiratory diseases as a result of the fires.- Higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean may also lead to drought in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, exacerbating fire risk, air pollution, and the incidence of respiratory ailments, especially among children.

- Alter do Châo, a small resort town within Santarém municipality in Pará state, welcomed some 200,000 tourists last year, causing real estate prices to soar, and putting increasing pressure on the Amazon resort’s surrounding forests.- Following the 2019 Amazon wildfire season, Brazilian police arrested four volunteer firefighters, accusing them of arson in the Alter do Châo Reserve. The firefighters allegedly set the fires to receive money from international environmental groups, according to the authorities. But no evidence has been presented as yet.- The investigation has dragged on for months, with one suspect still under house arrest. However, many locals believe land speculators and/or land thieves are far more likely to be responsible for last year’s blazes.- The fear expressed by many in Alter do Châo, is that lawlessness is becoming sanctioned in Amazonia due to the failure of the Bolsonaro government to prosecute socio-environmental crimes. Meanwhile, the volunteer fire brigade members continue awaiting the slow turning of Brazil’s wheels of justice.

- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we look at what’s driving the intense fire seasons we’ve seen around the world in recent years, what we can expect from the 2020 fire season in tropical forest regions like the Amazon and Indonesia, and some solutions to the problem.- Australia’s fire season may have just ended, but most of the world’s tropical forest regions will soon be entering their own. We welcome three guests to the podcast today to examine the trends shaping tropical fire seasons around the world: Rhett Butler, Dan Nepstad, and Aida Greenbury.- Wildfires have made international headlines a lot in the past few years, most recently due to Australia’s devastating bushfires, but the Amazon, Indonesia, and Congo Basin also had severe fire seasons in 2019.- Our guests discuss the drivers and also some solutions, like investing in Brazilian farmers to incentivize fire prevention, and the High Carbon Stock Approach to stemming forest loss.

- One of the Amazon’s most deforested regions, Lábrea is remote, poorly policed and suffering from a land tenure crisis. As a result, land grabbing, illegal logging and murder are routine.- A criminal nexus of landholders laying claim to protected forests they intend to turn into cattle pasture competes over the former São Domingos rubber plantation, where reporters found settlers had left en masse following a spate of killings last year.- Several of the high-profile landholders and local officials investigated and convicted by federal prosecutors since 2013 were found to have cloned or forged legal documents, and engaged in conspiracy, fraud, environmental crimes and invasion of public land.

- Nearly 25,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Brazil, with 1,378 deaths as of April 15, though some experts say this is an underestimate. Those figures continue growing, even as President Jair Bolsonaro downplays the crisis, calling it “no worse than a mild flu,” and places the economy above public health.- Scientists warn that the next emergent pandemic could originate in the Brazilian Amazon if Bolsonaro’s policies continue to drive Amazon deforestation rates ever higher. Researchers have long known that new diseases typically arise at the nexus between forest and agribusiness, mining, and other human development.- One way deforestation leads to new disease emergence is through fire, like the Amazon blazes seen in 2019. In the aftermath of wildfires, altered habitat often offers less food, changing animal behavior, bringing foraging wildlife into contact with neighboring human communities, creating vectors for zoonotic bacteria, viruses and parasites.- Now, Bolsonaro is pushing to open indigenous lands and conservation units to mining and agribusiness — policies which greatly benefit land grabbers. Escalating deforestation, worsened by climate change, growing drought and fire, heighten the risk of the emergence of new diseases, along with epidemics of existing ones, such as malaria.

- A recent study found that dung beetle species experienced significant diversity and population declines in human-modified tropical Brazilian ecosystems in the aftermath of droughts and fires exacerbated after the 2015-2016 El Niño climate event.- Forests that burned during the El Niño lost, on average, 64% of their dung beetle species while those affected only by drought showed an average decline of 20%. Dung beetles provide vital ecoservices, processing waste and dispersing seeds and soil nutrients.- For roughly the past three years, entomologists have been sounding alarms over a possible global collapse of insect abundance. In the tropics, climate change, habitat destruction and pesticide use are having clear impacts on insect abundance and diversity. However, a lack of funds and institutional interest is holding back urgently needed research.

- The Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, or MAAP, an initiative of the nonprofit organization Amazon Conservation, has published its analysis of preliminary deforestation data for the Amazon in 2019.- The figures project that deforestation in 2019 tapered, if slightly, or held relatively steady in four of the five Amazon countries included in the study.- Bolivia’s loss of forest in 2019 rose in comparison with 2018, likely as a result of widespread fires that burned standing forest.- The researchers used early-warning alerts of tree cover loss in 2019 to estimate total deforestation in the five countries and then compared the figures with historical rates going back to 2001.

- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.