Governments are Acting to Curb the Fires in the Amazon

Governments are responding to the planetary threat posed by the fires in the Amazon. There has been a 79 percent increase in fires in 2019 compared to the same period last year. These fires are a threat to air, water, and wildlife. The Amazon generates one fifth of the world's oxygen and it is the single largest reservoir of fresh water and biodiversity on Earth. The Amazon also regulates climate including heat and precipitation. The ongoing degradation of this region could trigger tipping points from which we will not be able to recover.

Protest

Brazilian protestors are pleading for the world's help to combat the record setting fires in the Amazon. Brazil is home to 60 percent of the the Amazon (the other 40 percent is in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana).

At the end of August more than 30 protests were held across Brazil demanding action to combat the fires. People held signs that read, "SOS Amazon. Everybody for the Amazon." and "The Amazon belongs to the people". They chanted "Hello, planet! Wake up! Without the Amazon, you can't breathe!"

They are also calling out their federal government with much of their anger being directed at Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Protestors in Rio chanted, "The Amazon stays, out with Bolsonaro". The far right Brazilian leader has been criticized  for the significant uptick in Amazonian deforestation.

Blame Bolsonaro

Opposition politicians, student activists, and Indigenous organizations have called for a congressional investigation into the cause of the fires. Bolsonaro has claimed the fires were set by environmentalists, however, the far more likely cause is slash and burn agriculture to make room for crops like soybeans and cattle ranching. Bolosnaro has emboldened those who are seeking to develop the Amazon.

Bolsonaro's contempt for environmental concerns in the Amazon is abundantly obvious. He has made good on his promise to clear the way for more development. This includes changing environmental rules, defunding government oversight, failing to enforce existing laws and dissolving the Amazon fund's committees. Perhaps the best example of Bolsonaro's disdain for ecological interests involves his appointees.

The populist leader has surrounded himself with climate deniers and conspiracy theorists. His environment minister was convicted of illegally approving a mining project in a conservation area and his foreign minister has described climate change as a "Marxist plot".

Bolsanoro's corruption and deceit have earned him the nickname of "Trump of the Tropics". Trump has tweeted praise for Bolsonaro, saying he is doing a "great job" and "He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!" Bolsonaro said the tweet pleased him "a lot" and he expressed his "profound appreciation".

G-7 Pledges Assistance

While Trump avoided the climate summit at the recent G-7 meeting in France, other world leaders including the leader of the host nation, prioritized efforts to combat fires in the Amazon. The G-7 announced that they will assist countries in the region with their efforts to fight fire. They indicated their plans to discuss the future of the Amazon including reforestation at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Led by French President Emmanuel Macron, world leaders at the G-7 summit came to an agreement on both technical assistance and financial aid. Macron announced that the G7 had agreed to an immediate fund of at least $20m (£16m) to help Amazon countries fight wildfires and launch a long-term global initiative to protect the rainforest. Macron made the announcement alongside Chile's President Sebastián Piñera. The proposed two-step process will involve collaborating with Amazonian countries to fight fires, protect biodiversity and reforestation. Similar support has also been proposed for African countries which have also been ravaged by wildfires.

Bolsonaro initially rejected the help that was offered by the G-7, but then he recanted due to public pressure. In a tweet, he said his country is being treated as though it "were a colony or no man's land." The Brazilian government said it will accept the financial assistance with the caveat that they administrate the disbursement.

European Aid and Trade

Brazil's new government may be responsible for the fires and deforestation in the Amazon but they will not be easily deterred. Changing the disastrous course of the Bolsonaro government will be difficult. So in addition to carrots, European leaders are also wielding sticks.

Germany and Norway have withdrawn their support for the Amazon fund (Norway has contributed $1.2 billion to the fund and Germany has donated 68 million). European leaders have also indicated that trade deals with Brazil are contingent on protecting the Amazon.

While protecting the Amazon may seem impossible, we have done it before. In 2004, a consorted global efforts succeeded in slowing deforestation in the region. However, to succeed today we will need a far more ambitious global effort.

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The Earth's Lungs are Burning and Bolsanaro is to Blame

Wildfires have raged all around the world in 2019 but nowhere is the situation more serious than in the record breaking Amazon fires. There have been almost 80,000 fires in the Amazon this year, more than 30,000 in recent weeks and almost 10,000 since the middle of August. Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPET reports that there have been 74,155 fires in the Amazon in 2019. The massive plumes of smoke from these fires stretch for 1.2 million square miles, cutting across the entire continent of South America and extending out into the South Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon is composed of 2.12 square miles of rainforest that spans Columbia and Peru as well as other countries. However, the majority of the Amazon is located in Brazil.

Bolsanaro is responsible

The far right Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro is proving to be the leading cause of Amazonian rainforest destruction. In the eight months since Bolsanaro has been in power more than 1,330 square miles of forest have been lost. July saw the single biggest increase in deforestation ever in the Amazon.

"This devastation is directly related to President Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental rhetoric, which erroneously frames forest protections and human rights as impediments to Brazil’s economic growth," Christian Poirier, the program director of Amazon Watch, an environmental non-profit organization, said in a statement. "Farmers and ranchers understand the president’s message as a licence to commit arson with wanton impunity, in order to aggressively expand their operations into the rainforest."

Bosanaro's environmental ministry announced that foreign aid earmarked to fight deforestation would be funneled to cattle and soybean farmers. Like Trump Bolsanaro also makes profoundly ignorant statements like "poop every other day" to address deforestation.

Like Trump Bolsanaro is also at war with those who espouse reason and facts. In his bid to curtail the public's access to information, Bolsanaro fired the head of the INPE, Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão.To add to the insanity that has earned Bolsanaro the nickname of Trump of the Tropics, the Brazilian president has made the absurd allegation that environmentalists set these fires. The truth is many of these fires are set by farmers who have been emboldened by Bolsanaro. Both Trump and the Brazilian president have earned reputations for their wanton environmental destruction.

Global catastrophe

Wildfires have raged on every continent on Earth in 2019 but there is something terrifyingly unique about the fires in the Amazon.  These fires are darkening the skies and choking Brazilian cities, but the impacts of these fires extend well beyond Brazil's borders. The fires in the Amazon are a threat to local communities, particularly the almost one million Indigenous people who inhabit the rainforests, but these fires are also a threat to life on Earth.

The Amazon is the planet's first line of defense against climate change and it is being razed to make room for carbon intensive farming. The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world. Amazonian deforestation is responsible for 8 percent of net global emissions.

The Amazon rainforest is one of the Earth's biggest suppliers of oxygen deforestation would reduce the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere by 20 percent. The Amazon contains 25 percent of the carbon dioxide currently sequestered by the world's forests. It is also one of the richest areas of biodiversity on Earth.

For these reasons the Amazon fires have been referred to in ominous headlines. NBC news proclaimed, "Amazon wildfires could be 'game over' for climate change fight". The Economist called it a "forest apocalypse", Futurism referred to "Hell World" and Business Insider cited a "doomsday scenerio". The Washington Post reports the Amazonian rainforests are "under threat as never before".

Devastating feedback loops

There are a number of feedback loops that can trigger tipping points from which we may not be able to recover. One such feedback loop is the one between wildfires and climate change.  

In a climate change induced feedback loop record breaking heat record breaking wildfires go together. Fires are caused by warming temperatures which are caused by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels. These fires in turn emit C02 which further exacerbates climate change.

According to a study published in Nature, warming temperatures could prevent trees from emitting oxygen and they could start emitting carbon instead.

The already devastating effects could get far worse. Approximately 20 percent or 300,000 square miles of Amazon rainforest in Brazil has been cut down. If we lose another 20 percent this could trigger an unstoppable feedback loop called "dieback" which could decimate the rainforest and turn the entire area into a savanna. This would exacerbate climate change by releasing 140 billion tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere. It would also mean an end to the world's most important carbon sink.

As reported in The Intercept, "losing another fifth of Brazil’s rainforest will trigger the feedback loop known as dieback, in which the forest begins to dry out and burn in a cascading system collapse… This would release a doomsday bomb of stored carbon, disappear the cloud vapor that consumes the sun’s radiation before it can be absorbed as heat, and shrivel the rivers in the basin and in the sky."

In a post for The Conversation, researchers said this process could also increase the number of fires. "Losing 20% of Brazil's rainforest could result in such a feedback loop, which would dry trees, leaving them unable to absorb as much carbon and much more flammable and likely to spread fires."

Brazilian environmental scientist Carlos Nobre is quoted by the Washington Post as saying: "The more the forest becomes degraded, the more the forest will become vulnerable to forest fires."

Poirier, summarized the situation when he said:  "The unprecedented fires ravaging the Amazon are an international tragedy and a dangerous contribution to climate chaos."

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