Amazon fires turn day into night in São Paulo

It was a cold Monday afternoon in São Paulo, the largest Brazilian city, located thousands of kilometers away from the Amazon. Around 3 pm, the sky became dark and the day turned into night: it was no storm, but clouds of smoke and polluted water vapor that covered the entire metropolitan region. Meteorologists said that the phenomena was a combination between a cold wave and smoke from forest fires in Rondonia and Bolivia. The event made headlines around the world and created a momentum for national and international media coverage on the forest fires that had been ravaging several areas of the Amazon for weeks.

According to data from INPE, 52,5% of all Brazil’s forest fires hotspots were concentrated in the Amazon region in 2019; the number of fires between January and August 18th increased 82% when compared to the previous year. Environmentalists and researchers associated the increased fires to the peaks in deforestation registered by INPE in June and July - which were stubbornly denied by the government and triggered the exoneration of INPE’s director in the beginning of August. INPE’s analysis were further corroborated by NASA, that said that it was possible to correlate the main fire hotspots with signature deforestation in the region, and not to other human activities such as clearing for preparing the land for cattle or crops.

When asked about the crisis, president Bolsonaro chose to (again) blame NGOs. Referring to the cuts on Fundo Amazônia, he said: “Crime exists and we need to do what we can to reduce this crime, but we took money away from NGOs. From the international donations, we took 40% that would go to NGOs (…) We also cut the public funding. So these people are missing the money. ” He continued: “So there might be happening, it might, I am not affirming, criminal activity by these NGO guys to get negative attention against me personally, and against the government of Brazil. This is the war we have to fight”. The president said that his ‘feeling’ is that the criminal forest fires intend to generate dramatic images to the international audience.. “It seems the fire was set in strategic places, all over the Amazon. How is that possible? Not even you would be able to be everywhere setting the forest on fire to film and broadcast to the world. All indicates that these people went there to film and set the fire. This is my feeling”. On social media, minister Ricardo Salles said the increase in forest fires was a result of dry weather, heat and wind.

On the 21st, Ibama published an announcement to buy a new monitoring system for Amazon. The Planet system, from the USA, is expected to be chosen. Since the beginning of the year, Salles and Bolsonaro clashed with Inpe’s system, claimed the data was “fake” and exonerated the institute’s president, Ricardo Galvão. Salles has always advocated for a private monitoring system