‘Intense’ drought, fires pummel Amazon

Parts of the Amazon rainforest are suffering through the worst droughts ever recorded, according to The Associated Press (AP).

Major rivers are dwindling. Wildfires are burning out of control. And significant rain is not expected until October.

The drought has also enabled wildfires to devastate protected areas, spreading smoke across thousands of kilometers — visible from space — and clouding skies as far away as Sao Paulo, a metro area of more than 20 million people near Brazil’s southeastern coast.

In Brazil so far this year, an area the size of Italy has burned, AP reported.

The span and intensity of the drought has renewed fears that the world’s largest tropical forest is close to reaching an ecological “tipping point” at which it could irretrievably degrade into dry savanna.

Illegal clearing of the forest — chiefly to make way for agriculture — is one of the main causes of the fires, one conservationist says.

“The forest used to be able to resist those fires,” said Rachel Biderman, who is based in Brazil and leads Conservation International’s work in South America. “Now, because of climate change, because of continued degradation of the forest, and because it’s the second year of drought in a row, the forest became so, so dry that it’s catching fire as it wouldn’t before.”

‘Intense and widespread’

It is not the first time in recent years that Amazonian droughts and wildfires have made headlines — human-made fires ravaged the region in 2019. But this drought is different, experts say.

“This is the first time that a drought has covered all the way from [Brazil’s] north to the country’s southeast,” Ana Paula Cunha, a researcher at the Brazilian National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters, said in a statement last week, according to the AP. “It is the most intense and widespread drought in history.”

The drought’s effects are being felt across South America, from Brazil to Bolivia, which last week declared a state of emergency. In neighboring Paraguay, the country’s namesake river, which moves 80 percent of its international commerce, was measured at its lowest level in over a century — bringing boat traffic to a near-standstill, AP reported.

Indigenous communities badly affected

The drought is punishing rural and Indigenous communities across the region.

Plummeting river levels have stranded many communities that are accessible only by water, AP reported, and a lack of potable water has led to a surge in illnesses.

In addition, Conservation International staff in the Brazilian state of Acre noted that lower water levels are causing river temperatures to rise, leading fish to die off — an increasingly fraught situation given that river fish are a critical source of food for local communities. So far, intact forests appear to be faring better than areas along the forest frontiers, where the majority of the fires have been detected. Poor air quality from the fires, ironically, is hampering efforts to protect the forests, with Conservation International staff in Bolivia electing to halt field visits as a result.

The crisis, conservationists say, has a multitude of causes — simple economics among them.

“This crisis is the result of a complicated combination of three factors,” said Eduardo Forno, who leads Conservation International’s work in Bolivia. “First, climate change has produced a deep drought, which will last for more than a year. Second, public policies in Bolivia: To secure land tenure, you have no choice but to deforest. Third, the value of land is on the rise, and non-productive actors are advancing on it as an asset for savings or land trafficking.”

One solution, experts say, is to work closely with Indigenous groups, particularly in funding the protection of their lands. Despite their crucial role in conserving nature, Indigenous Peoples receive a mere 1 percent of global funding for climate and biodiversity.

This financing is critical for enabling Indigenous communities in the Amazon to protect their territories, which are often difficult to access and have limited government presence. In addition, financing is critical for establishing economic alternatives for communities that have seen a trend of migration to cities, experts say.

“We work with these communities to identify economic alternatives so that they can stay in the Amazon and not migrate to the cities — there’s a huge migration trend from the Amazon into the big cities because of poverty,” Biderman said. “And those who do stay in the Amazon need economic sustenance, so that’s what we are focused on.”

“We urgently need finance to support the livelihoods of those communities that protect the forests.”

Bruno Vander Velde is the managing director of content at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates. Also, please consider supporting our critical work.