#amazon fires 2019

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil's indigenous people swear to fight for Amazon 'to last drop of blood'

Members of Brazil’s Mura indigenous tribe painted their bodies with orange-red paint and took up long bows and clubs as they headed into the jungle this week, prepared for battle. Their enemy? The deforestation and destruction of their home, the Amazon rainforest.

There are more than 18,000 Mura that live in Amazonas state, the largest and best-preserved state in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, according to data compiled by the non-government organization Instituto Socioambiental.

Members of the tribe showed Reuters an area the size of several football fields near their village, where the forest had been cleared away, leaving a broad dirt hole in the ground pockmarked by the treads of heavy machinery.

“With each passing day, we see the destruction advance: deforestation, invasion, logging,” said Handerch Wakana Mura, one of several leaders of a tribal clan of more than 60 people.

“We are sad because the forest is dying at every moment. We feel the climate changing and the world needs the forest.”

Indeed, Amazon deforestation has surged 67% in the first seven months of the year from the same period a year ago, according to Brazil space research agency INPE.

This week, the agency said forest fires were up more than 80% in the country year-to-date, hitting their highest point since at least 2013.

Everywhere in the region around the Mura village, pockets of fire were raging.

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazilian indigenous peoples propose boycott

Coalition of indigenous groups calls for boycott of companies that invade and exploit protected Brazilian lands.

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) is calling a boycott of companies that include invaders of protected areas in their supply chains.

To support this call the group has disclosed a list of foreign companies that have engaged in trade with Brazilian agribusiness agents accused of acting in areas of indigenous land conflicts and extracting resources from protected areas.

Besides the boycott, APIB's intention is to submit the data to the European Parliament and ask it to take action.

Eloy Terena, APIB's legal counsel, said: "Traders in Europe and North America can help by cutting ties with these bad Brazilian actors, thus sending a clear signal to Jair Bolsonaro that the rest of the world will not tolerate his policies."

"If these companies continue to support Brazilian companies, they must also be blamed for the destruction of tropical forests and the abuse of indigenous peoples."

Sonia Guajajara, indigenous leader and executive coordinator of APIB, said: "We understand that sanctioning the products that are produced and bought in areas of indigenous conflicts is the only thing that can guarantee the rights constituted here in Brazil.

"We have to charge those foreign countries and demand respect for territorial, environmental and human rights."

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil fires prompt 'prayers' for Amazon rainforest

A daytime blackout in a Brazilian city has prompted thousands of people to voice their concerns for the welfare of the Amazon rainforest.

Sao Paulo was blackened for around an hour on Monday after strong winds brought in smoke from forest fires burning in the states of Amazonas and Rondonia, more than 2,700km away.

The hashtag #prayforamazonia has now emerged as a global Twitter trend with more than 150,000 references to the fires.

Sao Paulo resident Gianvitor Dias told the BBC what it was like in the city during the smoke-filled blackout on Monday afternoon.

"It was as if the day had turned into night," he said. "Everyone here commented, because even on rainy days it doesn't usually get that dark. It was very impressive."

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil’s Neighbors Are Also Burning and Poisoning the Amazon

As the fires ravaging Brazil’s Amazon stoke global outrage, its neighbors are also scorching, ripping up and poisoning their forests -- largely under the radar.

Bolivia and Peru have seen faster growth in the number of fires this year than Brazil, as illegal miners, ranchers and cocaine producers continue to wreak havoc.

The 2.5 million square-mile Amazon is being attacked on all sides, with fires claiming an area equivalent to dozens of soccer pitches every hour in Brazil alone. At the deforestation rates seen in recent years, the whole forest will lose an area about the size of Virginia over the next decade according to Michael T. Coe, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center.

That’s endangering an eco-system that not only hosts a vast and largely unknown share of the world’s biodiversity but also helps regulate the continent’s climate.

Fires have multiplied in Brazil as loggers and farmers, emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro’s disdain for environmental oversight, set ablaze land cleared earlier this year. Countries like Colombia, Peru and Bolivia aren’t encouraging deforestation, but lack resources and political will to enforce existing regulations, according to Carolina Gil, an attorney for environmental protection group Amazon Conservation.

“The current crisis in Brazil is just the tip of the iceberg,” Gil said.

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Correction by five people in the tags: the map is mistaken, that’s not Uruguay, but Paraguay.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

While the Amazon burns, Brazil’s indigenous peoples rise up

As people around the world pray for Amazonia, indigenous Brazilians are taking action for social and environmental justice.

A record outbreak of fires is incinerating the Amazon, the largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world, which is home to at least one in every 10 species of plants and animals on Earth and millions of indigenous people.

Rather than working for environmental preservation, Jair Bolsonaro, the recently elected president of Brazil, is committed to opening up the Amazon to business. He has also refused to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples — who are facing a wave of increasing attacks and threats — to their ancestral land. Wealth instead of well-being seems to be Bolsonaro’s priority, which is why many are calling him the “Tropical Trump.”

“If you open up and destroy these [rainforest] territories, not only does it spell genocide for the people who live there, but it’s also catastrophic for all of humanity in terms of our fight against climate change,” Survival International senior researcher Sarah Shenker told Earther. “By far, the best way to combat climate change is to protect indigenous territories.”

Indigenous Brazilians are now on a mission to remind society that they exist and are battling against the colonial tactics of governments and corporations, which see them — and the rain forest — as obstacles to economic development.

“We Indians are like plants. How can we live without our soil, without our land?” asked Marta, from the Guarani tribe, in a report by Survival Brazil. “We exist. I want to tell the world that we are alive and want to be respected as peoples.”

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Bolsonaro government thanked Johnson for Amazon fire support

UK prime minister’s refusal to criticise Amazon fires and sharp rise in deforestation praised by Brazilian ambassador

Boris Johnson was personally thanked by the Brazilian government for refusing to support European action over the Amazon fires, according to documents obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

As the rainforest burned last summer – fuelled by a sharp rise in deforestation that critics blame partly on President Jair Bolsonaro’s agenda – Johnson criticised a threat by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to block the EU’s Mercosur trade deal with Brazil.

Speaking in Biarritz before the G7 summit in August, Johnson described the fires as a “tragedy” but called Macron’s threat an excuse to interfere with free trade. Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, had already given his support to Macron’s proposal.

Days after the G7, the Brazilian ambassador “thanked the prime minister for his stance at Biarritz, and said it had not gone unnoticed in Brasilia”, according to documents released to the Bureau through a freedom of information request. 

Barry Gardiner, Labour’s shadow international trade secretary, called on Johnson to rethink his approach. “Our government has refused to challenge President Bolsonaro over his policy measures, which are directly responsible for encouraging some of the worst forest fires ever seen and the mass displacement of indigenous peoples,” he said. “They should be showing leadership, not endorsing a regime that is responsible for some of the most climate-damaging policies of our time.”

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

tw: fire

So, in Brazilian environmentalism news, the state of Rondonia has been (literally) on fire for the past two weeks.

It has already left people injured or dead or displaced, cancelled or delayed airplane flights, and destroyed properties and farms. There are 50% more fire spots this year than last year, and air humidity is currently at 20%. The fire has already burned 1,000 hectares of an environmental reserve of 10,000 hectares. The capital Porto Velho has been non-stop covered by smoke. Carbonized corpses of an embraced couple have been found. Firefighters have pointed out the extremely dry weather and agricultural practices from a settlement of landless people as the probable aggravators, and inhabitants of that settlement have claimed invaders and loggers are responsible for the fires. People both from urban and rural areas complain about the bad quality of air and health grievances. "You can't breathe there, Rondônia is suffocating to death”, a journalist said.

Sources: x, x, x, x

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Wildfires are burning around the world. The most alarming is in the Amazon rainforest.

Record heat, drought, and deforestation are contributing to wildfire risk.

Major wildfires are burning all over the world right now.

More than 21,000 square miles of forest have gone up in flames in Siberia this month, putting Russia on track for its worst year on record for wildfires. On Monday, a wildfire in the Canary Islands forced more than 8,000 people to flee. Over the weekend, new fires ignited in Alaska, extending what’s already been an unusually long fire season for the state. Last week, Denmark dispatched firefighters to Greenland combat a wildfire approaching inhabited areas.

But perhaps even more alarming are the wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest tropical forest. It’s an area with torrential rain that almost never burns on its own, yet the blazes have burned for more than two weeks, growing so intense that they sent smoke all the way to São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city.

In many ecosystems, wildfires are a natural and essential phenomenon. They clear out decaying brush, restore nutrients to soil, and even help plants germinate. But in recent years, humans have made the destruction from wildfires worse at every step. Suppression of natural fires has allowed dry vegetation to accumulate. Human activity is changing the climate, which is forcing some forests to heat up and dry out. People are building ever closer to areas ready to ignite. And people end up igniting the majority of wildfires, whether through downed power lines, errant sparks, or arson.

But the Amazon rainforest, which remains drenched for much of the year, does not burn naturally. Instead, the fires are ignited by people. Farmers use slash-and-burn tactics to clear land for farming and pasture, though it’s illegal in Brazil this time of year due to fire risk.

Illegal logging operations in Brazil have also been known to start fires as a tactic to drive indigenous people off their land and to cover their tracks. The Amazon rainforest has experienced a record number of fires this year, with 72,843 reported so far. It’s an 84 percent increase over the number of wildfires at the same time last year.

“There is nothing abnormal about the climate this year or the rainfall in the Amazon region, which is just a little below average,” Alberto Setzer, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), told Reuters. “The dry season creates the favorable conditions for the use and spread of fire, but starting a fire is the work of humans, either deliberately or by accident.”

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