Amazon Rainforest Fire

There’s no Time To grieve for roses when foresT’s
on fire
This statement holds true today, when the lungs of earth are burning like Satan’s cave. The
Amazon rainforests, largest, most diverse, and beneficial ecosystem in the world that serves as
the world’s largest specie rich biome, has been on fire from the last month.
The fire was so intense, and the smoke was so thick that the forest itself appeared to have
disappeared. Reuters reported that from the sky, the fires ranged from small pockets to
those bigger than a football field, with the smoke making it impossible to see behind the
front line of flames to discern the full extent of the blaze.
"This is not just a forest that is burning," said Rosana Villar of Greenpeace, who helped CNN
arrange its flight over the damaged and burning areas. "This is almost a cemetery. Because all
you can see is death."
Experts say deforestation and a practice called slash-and-burn are to blame for most of the
flames. About 99 percent of Amazon fires start from human actions, "either on purpose or by accident,"
Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at INPE told CNN. Setzer said people often set the forest ablaze to clear
land for agriculture.
People cut down patches of forest, allow the area to dry out, then set the remains ablaze to
make room for agriculture or other development. They might also set fires to replenish the soil
and encourage the growth of pastures for cattle.
Paulo Artaxo, an atmospheric physicist at the University of São Paulo, explained that the fires are
expanding along the borders of new agricultural development, which is what’s often seen in fires
related to forest clearing.
The vast majority of the fires can be attributed to humans, Christian Poirier, program director of
the nonprofit Amazon Watch, told CNN, as fire is often used to clear out the land for farming or
ranching.
BUT WHY SHOULD WE BOTHER?
Among the environmental trends undermining our future are shrinking forests, expanding
deserts, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, disappearing species and rising temperatures.
The temperature increases bring crop withering heat waves, more destructive storms, more
intense droughts, more forest fires, and, of course, ice melting.
We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not
recognize.
“The Amazon was buying you some time that it is not going to buy anymore,” Carlos Quesada, a
scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research, told Public Radio International in
2018.
Amazon, being the LUNGS OF THE EARTH, play a crucial role in keeping our planet's carbon-
dioxide levels in check. The forest produces 20 percent of the oxygen in our planet's atmosphere. Its
home to 30 million people (350 indigenous and ethnic groups). As the trees and plants perish, they
would release billions of tons of carbon that has been stored for decades — making it nearly
impossible to escape a climate catastrophe. If enough rain forest is lost and can’t be restored,
the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the
planet’s “lung capacity.”
Though, the climate change has always been blamed for every calamity around the globe, but
this time, the climate change is NOT the reason! They are caused, by and large, because of the
dire consequences of human’s selfish action. However, the climate change can escalate the
intensity of the fire, but it was not the sole reason at all.
WHAT’S SO ‘POLITICAL’ ABOUT THIS!
When Jair Bolsonaro was campaigning for office as a far-right candidate, he called for setting
aside less land in the Amazon for indigenous tribes and preservation, and instead making it
easier for industry to come into the rainforest. Since his election in October 2018, Bolsonaro put
the Ministry of Agriculture in charge of the demarcation of indigenous territories instead of the
Justice Ministry. His policies have been politically popular among industry and agricultural
interests in Brazil, even as they’ve been condemned by Brazilian environmental groups and
opposition lawmakers. The fires have called international attention to the plight of the Amazon
and have turned up the heat on Bolsonaro’s environmental policies.
French President Emmanuel Macron took to Twitter to call for action, pushing for emergency
international talks on the Amazon at the G7 summit. On August 26th, the world’s seven largest
economies offered Brazil more than $22 million in aid to help it get the fires under control.
Bolsonaro promptly turned down the money, accusing Macron on Twitter of treating Brazil like a
colony. Some in Brazil, including Bolsonaro, see the international aid as an attack on Brazil’s
sovereignty, and its right to decide how to manage the land within its borders.
HOW ARE THE FIRES BEING FOUGHT?
Barroso is the chairman of the national forest fire management committee of the National
League of Military Firefighters Corps in Brazil. He has spent three decades fighting fires in Mato
Grosso, one of the regions most affected by the ongoing fires. According to Barroso, more than
10,400 firefighters are spread thin across 5.5 million square kilometers in the Amazon and
“hotspots” break out in the locations they’re unable to cover.
Barroso contends that they need more equipment and infrastructure to adequately battle the
flames. He wants to establish a forest fire protection system in the Amazon that brings together
government entities, indigenous peoples, local communities, the military, large companies,
NGOs, and education and research centers.
Using planes to put out wildfires in the Amazon isn’t a typical method of firefighting in tropical
forests, and is likely to get expensive, Lancaster University’s Jos Barlow tells The Verge. He says
that large-scale fires in areas cleared by deforestation “are best contained with wide firebreaks
created with bulldozers — not easy in remote regions.” If the fires enter the forest itself, they
require different tactics. “They can normally be contained by clearing narrow fire breaks in the
leaf litter and fine fuel,” Barlow says. “But this is labor intensive over large scales, and fires need
to be reached soon, before they get too big.”
Barlow says, “The best firefighting technique in the Amazon is to prevent them in the first place —
by controlling deforestation and managing agricultural activities.”

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There’s no Time To grieve for roses when foresT’s

BUT WHY SHOULD WE BOTHER?

WHAT’S SO ‘POLITICAL’ ABOUT THIS!

HOW ARE THE FIRES BEING FOUGHT?

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