As it happens6:32Brazil is burning, and crime and climate change are to blame
As Cristiane Mazzetti flew over Brazil’s Amazon basin this month, assessing the damage caused by the fires, she couldn’t help but feel frustrated.
Mazzetti is a forest activist for Greenpeace Brazil. For years, the environmental group has been trying to stop the deforestation and climate change that make the country so prone to forest fires.
Yet this summer, fires in the country have broken records, devastating the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, destroying vast swaths of biodiverse wetlands, razing sugarcane plantations and even bringing thick smoke and smog to the country’s normally untouched capital, Brasilia.
“We’ve been working for so long to change things, and it’s hard. It makes me sad — it makes me think about the people who live near these areas that are being destroyed, the people who live in nearby cities and are getting sick, the people who already have respiratory diseases and are getting very contagious,” Mazzetti said As it happens host Nil Köksal.
“It’s frustrating. But at the same time, we can’t give up.”
“People are setting things on fire”
Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva said the country was “at war” with the fire.
The total number of fire warnings this month is almost 3,500 in the southeastern state of São Paulo, the highest number since records began in 1998. The number of hot spots recorded in the Amazon this summer is up 98 percent from last year, according to Greenpeace.
Two workers at an industrial plant in São Paulo died Friday trying to put out a blaze. In the Amazon, a federal brigadier also died Monday while working in the Capoto Jarina indigenous territory.
Winds are carrying smoke into Brasilia, where the sky is so dark that drivers need headlights to navigate the roads during the day, Mazzetti said. The smog has caused 48 cities in the state to declare red alerts, forcing schools and events to close.
The government says the fires have nothing to do with nature.
“No fires caused by lightning have been detected. This means that people are setting fire to the Amazon, the Pantanal and especially the state of São Paulo,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Sunday.
A day after the president made those comments, the governor of São Paulo announced that four men had been arrested on suspicion of arson that destroyed thousands of hectares of sugarcane plantations in the north of the country.
Secretary of State for Agriculture Guilherme Piai said Tuesday that some of the arrested men had informed police that they were linked to one of the country’s largest criminal gangs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital.
Drone footage from São Paulo state on Aug. 24 shows fields engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rising overhead.
Mazzetti says the forest fires that rage across the rainforest every year are largely caused by humans.
Greenpeace and other environmental experts say the main cause of Brazil’s forest fires is deforestation — specifically, people and companies who deliberately, and often illegally, set fire to areas to clear them of vegetation so they can be used for other purposes, such as agriculture.
Since da Silva’s government took power last year, deforestation in the Amazon has decreased by 45.7 percent between August 2023 and July 2024, Greenpeace said, citing data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (BNISR).
By comparison, under former president Jair Bolsonaro, who advocated clearing protected forests to make way for farming and mining, deforestation reached record levels.
But Greenpeace said 666 square kilometres of deforestation were recorded in July this year, up 33.2 per cent on the same period last year. It added that this was accompanied by an increase in the number of fires.
Mazzetti says that to prevent this, the government needs to introduce harsher penalties for environmental crimes and enforce these laws more rigorously.
“People who commit these kinds of crimes just assume they can get away with it without facing appropriate punishment,” she said.
Deforestation is the main driver of climate change in Brazil, and climate change in turn is exacerbating fires, Mazzetti said.
Despite this vicious circle, he does not lose hope.
“There is still time,” she said. “We are fighting to ensure that actions and policies are implemented to deal with the scenario, to deal with climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation to deal with deforestation.
“We can’t just give up.”
With files from Reuters and The Associated Press. Interview with Cristiane Mazzetti produced by Owen Leitch
