The burned area in Brazil surged in the first 11 months of 2024, nearly doubling from the same period last year, reports Observador.
According to data released on Monday by MapBiomas Fire Monitor, the area affected by fire between January and November reached 29.7 million hectares, an increase of 90 percent compared to the same period in 2023. The NGO said it was the largest extension of burned area in the last six years. More than half (57 percent) of the burned area was in the Brazilian Amazon (16.9 million hectares) which saw 7.6 million hectares of forest and 5.59 million hectares of pasture burn. Severe droughts devastated the massive rain forest this year, climate change and El Niño driving down water levels throughout the region to historic lows.
The Cerrado, a tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, accounted for just under a third (32.3 percent) of burned area at 9.6 million hectares, the overwhelming majority of which (85 percent) was native vegetation. The Pantanal wetlands saw 1.9 million hectares razed, making up 6.4 percent of the total.
[See more: Water levels in a major tributary of the Amazon have hit a record low]
All three major biomes saw an uptick in fire, with the Cerrado recording an increase of 47 percent compared to the average of the last five years, while fire-affected area in the Pantanal surged 68 percent above the five-year average. MapBiomas Fire Monitor coordinator, Ane Alencar, told Portuguese news agency Lusa that the “disproportionate increase” seen so far in 2024, as well as the increase being more severe in areas of forest and native vegetation, points to a “need to reduce and control the use of fire, especially in years when weather conditions are extreme.”
While the severe drought contributed to the rise in fires seen in the first 11 months of the year, firefighting – or lack thereof – also factored into the growth. The Brazilian environmental workers union Ascema, Reuters reported back in May, said that the insufficient funding for the Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA could lead to an “unprecedented catastrophe” this year. IBAMA received less than half the overall funding requested in 2024 and saw its firefighting budget cut by 24 percent.
The dismal funding situation kicked off intense negotiations between the government and Ascema workers, who have suffered more than a decade of paltry pay raises and dwindling staff. Slow-walking their work starting in January 2024, and the union went on strike in June only to be forced by court order in July to resume licensing and forest fire prevention activities despite being on strike.
