A helicopter sprays water on a forest fire in the hills of Quito on September 25, 2024.
A record wave of wildfires, driven by severe drought linked to climate change and deforestation, is wreaking havoc across South America.
The fire killed at least 30 people, blanketed the city in toxic smoke and caused millions of dollars in economic losses.
This fire season is “completely different” from the one that devastated forests in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia in 2019, said Erika Berenguer, a Brazilian ecologist and researcher at the University of Oxford.
Rain helped quell the fires at the time, but in Brazil the blazes were mainly caused by farmers taking advantage of lax laws under then far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to clear land for crops and ranches. woke up.
This year, the continent is experiencing a severe drought. The Amazon Basin, normally one of the wettest places on Earth, is experiencing the worst fires in nearly 20 years, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Observatory.
Berengar blamed climate change for making the Amazon “very flammable.”
How bad are the fires?
According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), more than 400,000 fires were recorded across South America between January 1 and September 26.
“In nine months, we have already exceeded the number of infections recorded in the whole of 2023,” Berenguer pointed out.
According to Copernicus, fires have destroyed 40.2 million hectares (99 million acres) of vegetation in Brazil this year, far higher than the average of 31 million hectares in each of the past 10 years.
According to local media, more than a dozen firefighters died in the line of duty.
A bull is seen in front of a house surrounded by fire caused by illegal arson in the Amazon rainforest near the city of La Brea in northern Brazil on September 4, 2024.
In Ecuador, the mayor of the capital Quito this week declared the Andean city “under attack” with 27 fires that forced more than 100 families to evacuate before they could be extinguished.
Ecuador has declared a state of emergency in several states, and Peru has seen 21 people die from fires since July. Most were small farmers.
Several fires are also burning in Argentina and Colombia on opposite ends of the continent.
What caused the fire?
Experts and national authorities point to a combination of combustible factors, primarily climate change and drought exacerbated by slash-and-burn agriculture.
Ecuador’s Environment Minister Inés Manzano said: “This is a clear example of climate change. If you thought climate change didn’t exist, here it is.”
In Peru and Bolivia, some of the fires are believed to have been caused by farmers burning land to increase fertility for planting, a traditional practice in the Andean countries and tolerated by authorities. I am doing it.
In the Brazilian Amazon, both subsistence farmers and the agribusiness industry have lit bonfires to clear forests for cattle and crops, fueled by the worst drought in the country’s recent history.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030 and believes most fires are “criminal” in nature.
In some places, fires may be started by arsonists.
One person was arrested in Quito and dozens of others in Argentina and Brazil on suspicion of malicious arson.
Firefighters arrive at the scene of a fire in Concepcion, Boliba on September 24, 2024.
How will people be affected?
The fires caused air quality to drop dramatically in several cities.
Latin America’s largest city, São Paulo, was ranked the world’s most polluted city in early September, according to Switzerland’s IQAir.
Much of Brazil is still shrouded in sharp smoke, which earlier this month drifted south as far as Montevideo and Buenos Aires, causing a phenomenon known as “black rain.”
Residents of many Brazilian cities are experiencing symptoms such as respiratory illness and stinging in the eyes.
In Bolivia, health authorities are recommending people wear masks due to poor air quality.
The region’s economy is also in crisis. Losses in Brazil’s agricultural sector amounted to $2.7 billion from June to August, mainly from the sugarcane harvest.
Approximately 45,000 livestock have died in Ecuador after more than two months without rain.
What is the government doing?
Thousands of firefighters and soldiers are being sent across the continent to fight the blazes.
“Everyone wants to hire thousands of firefighters or buy planes. That’s all well and good, but it’s too little, too late,” Behrenger said.
“We need to prevent fires, because once they get big they’re very difficult to extinguish,” she said, calling for stronger action against deforestation and the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
© 2024 AFP
Citation: Why South America is Burning (September 28, 2024) Retrieved September 28, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-south-america.html
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