Five months after the fires of the Amazon would cause a severe diplomatic crisis in Brazil, with harsh criticism of the Government from France, and other corners of the planet, the official data indicate that during the first year of Jair Bolsonaro in power increased by 30% in this region compared with the previous year. The largest tropical rainforest in the world had 89.178 pockets of fire in during 2019.
The fire increased in all areas of Brazil, but especially in the pantanal, a small basin located on the border with Bolivia, where it is multiplied by six. The balance was released this Wednesday by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), in charge of measuring deforestation in Brazil and the object of verbal attacks and pressures by the president Bolsonaro.
The worst month in the Amazon, it was in August, with 30.901 fires that unleashed a very strong wave of criticism from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and other world leaders against Bolsonaro and his way of managing a tropical forest plays a key role to slow down global warming. The controversial far-right, which came to power on January 1, 2019, has been charged by all the previous ministers of Environment of the dismantling of the ecological policy, including the mechanisms of control and punishment of environmental crimes in addition to encouraging the loggers and illegal miners.
The last annual balance for deforestation is the worst of the last decade. The Amazon lost 9.700 square kilometres between August 2018 and July 2019, as reported by the INPE in November. Illegal destruction of vegetation and the fire-intentioned they are, according to the experts part of the process of creating pasture for cattle or crops.
Bolsonaro has never hidden that the policy of environmental preservation effect seems to be exaggerated, and his plan is to authorize the exploitation of mineral resources in indigenous lands.
Despite the rise in fires last year, are less than those of 2017 (more than 100,000), and far below the record high of 2004, when it totaled 218.000.
In August, the president of brazilian came to accuse the NGOS of being behind the fires. The diplomatic crisis, which included personal insults via Twitter against the wife of Macron, has not been closed at all. Just a few days ago, the brazilian president afeaba to his French counterpart not to pick up against the australian authorities by the fires that have destroyed millions of hectares. As has been explained these days experts on environment in the brazilian press, the fires that devour Australia due to natural causes, while the Amazon is a rainforest, where you almost always are caused by the human being.
The fires of August raised particular alarm among environmental specialists, because besides increasing in number they anticipated. As of September, while the controversy amainaba, began to decline because Bolsonaro decreed a ban on burning to clean pastures and deployed thousands of military.
