3,358 fires were detected on August 22 in the largest tropical forest in the world, a sign of a worsening of deforestation.
Le Monde with AFP
Lesse Record: In the Brazilian Amazon, the number of fires has reached its highest level this week for 15 years, according to official figures. Satellite images detected 3,358 fires on Monday August 22, the highest number over a day since September 2007, confirmed on Thursday at the France-Presse (AFP) agency an official of the National Institute of Spatial Studies ( INPE).
This figure is three times higher than August 10, 2019, known as “Fire Day”, when Brazilian farmers launched a vast burl operation in the northeast of the country, which had spread to Sao Paulo , some 2,500 kilometers away, arousing an international condemnation.
According to Alberto Setzer, head of the INPE fire surveillance program, nothing proves that Monday fires are coordinated. Rather, they are a general scheme of increase in deforestation.
The worst month of August since the start of the Bolsonaro presidency
Experts indeed attribute fires in the Amazon to the action of farmers, breeders and speculators, who illegally clear the land by burning trees. “The regions where the most fires occur are moving more and more north”, following a “growing deforestation arc,” said Mr. Setzer to AFP.
The Amazon fire season generally begins in August, with the arrival of drought. This year, in July, INPE detected 5,373 fires, 8 % more than in the same month in 2021. Since the start of the current month, 24,124 fires have been recorded, which should be the worst month of ‘August since the start of the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, even if the situation remains far from that of August 2005, when 63,764 households had been detected, a record since 1998.
Jair Bolsonaro is criticized for its support for the destruction of the Amazon, for the benefit of agriculture. Since coming to power in January 2019, the average annual deforestation in Amazon in Brazil has increased by 75 % compared to the previous decade. The far -right president tweeted Thursday at the address of those who criticize his policy: “If they wanted a beautiful forest to belong to them, they should have preserved those of their own country … The Amazon belongs, and will belong always, in Brazilians “.