New figures show the amount of the Amazon rainforest being cleared in Brazil this month has hit a record high.
Preliminary data from the Brazilian space agency, INPE, reveals that 1145 square kilometres of the world’s greatest rainforest has been cleared in August so far. That marks the highest level in the past five years.
The worst hit region is the northern state of Pará, where almost half of the clearances (513 sq km) have taken place. Deforestation, which is often carried out by dragging strong chains between powerful tractors, is typically a prelude to drying out vegetation before fires are deliberately started to clear land for ranching.
A decree by Bolsonaro, expected to be officially published today, will ban the setting of fires for 60 days with some exceptions for forestry and agriculture. The move will come just after Brazil accepted Chile’s offer of firefighting aircraft but rejected $22 million of aid offered by the G7.
The international fallout from the fires has spread beyond politics to business too. VF, the company that owns the Vans, Timberland and North Face brands, said in a statement yesterday that it would no longer source leather and hides from Brazil “until we have the confidence and assurance that the materials used in our products do not contribute to environmental harm in the country”.
Greenpeace UK said it was unsurprising the brands did not want to be associated with Bolsonaro’s policies. But Bolsonaro took to social media to say that there had been no such suspension and leather exports were occurring as normal.
The Brazilian president has said in recent days that NGOs were the “biggest suspects” for starting the fires, which are releasing huge amounts of carbon and creating smoke hazes across South America.
However, one of Brazil’s most respected scientists, Carlos Nobre of Sao Paulo University, says that is nonsense. “In fact, a number of NGOs have been arduously working to develop capacity among farmers and cattle ranchers to use fire rationally and to prevent forest fires,” he says.
There have been around 85,000 fires in Brazil this year so far, according to INPE, up 75 per cent on the same period last year. Nobre wrote a paper last year warning of an ecological tipping point in the Amazon, where fires and deforestation cause the region to flip to a non-forest ecosystem. He says at the current rate of destruction, this tipping point will arrive within 30 years.
He is also scathing about the Brazilian government’s attacks on the integrity of INPE, which is considered a gold standard in satellite monitoring by international researchers. “The federal government’s attack on INPE reflects the era of darkness that Brazil is moving in,” he says.