In 2024, the largest area of the Brazilian Amazon burned in 17 years, according to satellite data from the Space Research Institute in Brazil. The total number of forest fires increased by 43 percent year on year.
Brazil's Space Research Institute (IPME) reported that 137,538 forest fires had been recorded by early December, of which only some had been contained. This is the worst result in 17 years – in 2007, there were 186,480 forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon. Compared to last year, the lost area in 2024 increased by as much as 114 percent.
“Many inhabitants of the Amazon lost everything, all their life's work,” IPME noted.
Record drought
The main cause of most Amazon fires are deliberate and uncontrolled arson for cattle ranching and illegal mining purposes. However, this year the world's invaluable forest experienced as many as 150 days without rainfall, which contributed to an increase in the number of fires.
Brazilian central authorities explain that the fight against the fires ravaging the Amazon forest is made more difficult by the fact that only 30 percent of its territory in the country is directly under the administration of the central government, while direct jurisdiction over the remaining 70 percent is exercised by local authorities. Since October, under an agreement concluded with the governors of states in the Amazon, additional services have been mobilized to extinguish fires.
The government in Brazil announced that a force of 1,700 specialists, eleven planes, three hundred firefighting vehicles and over twenty vessels are currently fighting 578 fires in the Brazilian Amazon forest.
“Lungs of the World”
The Amazon rainforest, also called the Amazon jungle, is a humid, deciduous tropical forest covering most of the Amazon basin, which covers an area of 7 million square kilometers, of which 6 million is rainforest. The Amazon constitutes more than half of all rainforests and is the largest and richest species-rich area on Earth.
Main photo source: Shutterstock