Burning Up Again in Brazilian Amazon
9/16/98
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Burning Up Again in Brazilian Amazon
Source: The Environmental Defense Fund
Status: Distribute freely with proper credit to source
Date: 9/16/98
EDF analysis of data relating to burning rates in the Amazon as well as an
article on the same subject from the NYT follows. This is not an alert.
Contact information:
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND
Washington D.C. 20009
Tel. 202 387 3500; Fax 202 234 6049
Stephan_Schwartzman@edf.org
Burning Up Again in Brazilian Amazon
An analysis of NOAA-12 satellite data, 1997 - 1998
Fires detected by the NOAA 12 weather satellite in the Brazilian Amazon
increased 86% in the months of June, July, August and the first eight days
of September 1998 over the same period in 1997. The satellite recorded
22,917 fires in the Amazon region in the hundred days in 1997 and 45,596
in 1998. Analysis of the satellite data last year showed an increase of
over 50% between July and November 1996 and the same period in 1997.
The data are generated by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
(AVHRR) on the NOAA 12 satellite, which detects thermal anomalies. The
actual number of fires is higher than that recorded by NOAA 12, which
orbits above the Amazon at night, recording only the larger fires that
burn into the night. The number and distribution of fires is calculated
daily by the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) and posted
on its web site.
Fires are set by farmers and ranchers to clear old cattle pasture and to
burn newly cut forest, but many of these burn out of control, starting
accidental fires. The Woods Hole Research Center's seven-year field study
of fire in the Amazon shows that about half of the fires that burn in the
region are accidental.
The increase in part reflects low rainfall in much of the region, from the
continued effects of the El Ni o weather pattern that brought drought and
unprecedented fires in the forest of Roraima state in February and March
of this year. Burning began in effect a month earlier in 1998 than in 1997
- only 464 fires were recorded in June, 1997 as against 2,627 in June of
1998. Last year, the southern Amazon dry season (below the equator)
stretched into November. Normally rains start and fires go out by late
September or early October. Most fires were registered in Mato Grosso and
Par states in both years.
World Bank Fire Prevention Program Stalled
Last April, the World Bank began negotiations on what was to have been an
emergency R$29 million fire control and prevention program, including some
US$15 million in World Bank funds. After Brazilian government
environmental agency (IBAMA) attempts to allocate half the budget to
lavish equipment purchases, and extensive bureaucratic delays, the program
was approved September 15th by the World Bank board - in time for next
year's burning season. While it is to Bank's credit that it refused to
approve IBAMA's initial pork-barrel proposal, the program so far is a
testimonial to the Bank's and government's failure to respond to a clearly
identified emergency in a timely and effective way. It was evident to all
of the actors that an effective project would need to be quick,
decentralized, focused on fire prevention and inclusive of as many
agencies, NGOs and local governments as possible. The non-governmental
Woods Hole Research Center and Amazon Environmental Research
Institute (IPAM) produced and made available a fire risk map, based in
remote sensing and meteorological data (forest type, occurrence of
previous fires, rainfall) by May, furnishing an empirical, scientific
basis on which to organize fire prevention efforts. The government
proposal to the Bank however was centralized, focused on fire fighting
(much better as a photo opportunity than as a means of addressing the
problem) and exclusive - offers from the army, for example, to provide
personnel and equipment were rebuffed.
The only organized fire prevention action has been taken by the Amazon
Working Group (GTA), a network of over 300 non- governmental and
grassroots organizations in the region. The network, with a fraction of
the resources promised in the Bank-GOB program, supplied by USAID and
UNDP, has held training seminars in fire prevention across the "arc of
deforestation" (the area at greatest fire risk), training some 9,000
community leaders in fire prevention and control techniques. Funds for
fire control equipment have yet to materialize.
Large scale fires have burned large expanses of tropical savanna (cerrado)
and some transitional forest in Mato Grosso and Tocantins states,
including the Araguaia National Park on Bananal Island, and in the
vicinity of the Xingu Indigenous Park, a 2.6 million-hectare indigenous
reserve home to 16 ethnic groups. Last week, fortuitous changes in
the winds and rain averted large scale forest fires in the Xingu, but the
fires on Bananal island continue to burn. Even if there is no high-profile
mega-fire, such as in Roraima, the destruction of the forest continues
piecemeal.
There is nonetheless an important opportunity to advance on the work that
Woods Hole, IPAM, and the GTA have done. Large ranchers and small farmers
alike suffer heavy costs from accidental fires (in pasture and fences
destroyed, as well as lost crops), and these account for half of all the
fires burning. The GTA reports enormous interest and willingness to
mobilize around the issue of fire on the part of local communities. There
are ample possibilities for effective work on the prevention and control
of accidental fires, if bureaucratic inefficiency and institutional self-
interest do not prevent it.
Fires Detected in Amazon in 1997 and 1998
AC AP AM MA MT PA RO RR TO Total
Jun-97 0 0 1 48 219 44 0 0 152 464
Jun-98 1 0 2 80 2198 59 26 0 261 2627
Jul-97 4 0 43 68 1292 975 40 0 155 2577
Jul-98 7 0 44 258 3242 643 161 0 646 5001
Aug-97 4 0 86 614 7532 5383 649 0 1050 15318
Aug-98 10 1 167 1027 14622 6721 1522 0 3692 27762
Sep 97* 2 0 25 187 2716 832 291 1 504 4558
Sep 98* 91 7 53 535 2938 1735 565 0 1282 7206
* Figures are given for only first 8 days of
Sept. 1997 and Sept 1998
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New York Times, September 13, 1998
Fires Posing Greater Risk as Amazon Rain Forest Grows Drier
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
RIO DE JANEIRO -- A year after the Brazilian government dismissed studies
warning that parts of the Amazon rain forest were becoming so dry they
could burn uncontrollably, fires have become a greater threat than ever to
intact rain forest and to indigenous peoples, according to environmental
groups that monitor the Amazon.
The fires are set by ranchers and farmers to clear land for grazing and
planting, but are burning out of control at an alarming rate,
environmental groups say, due in large part to the drying effect of El
Nino.
The number of fires has more than doubled since last year, according to
the government's own figures. Last year, 7,800 square miles of rain forest
caught fire, the Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts said.
Until rains doused flames in Mato Grosso this month, fire appeared set to
engulf the Xingu National Park, which houses 5,000 indigenous people
belonging to 17 tribes. In March, fires burned 2,379 square miles of rain
forest in Roraima, including parts of the Yanomami Indian reserve, near
the border with Venezuela.
In addition, 10 percent of virgin rain forest, covering an area the size
of California, is at risk of catching fire this year, according to the
Environmental Research Institute on the Amazon, an independent group.
Following the fires in Roraima, government officials reversed their
position, acknowledging that fires had indeed become a real threat. They
created special teams to monitor burnings and fight fires, but
environmental groups contend that the effort was too little too late. On
Thursday, the World Bank announced a $15 million emergency project to
fight the fires.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has come under blistering criticism
from environmentalists for putting off enforcement of Brazil's first
Environmental Crimes Law, which was seven years in the making. Steve
Schwartzman, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, called
the order delaying enforcement "a betrayal of everything the government
negotiated for."
In July, the government announced a $30-million plan to monitor burnings
and create fire-fighting teams to control the fires during the burning
season. But it has freed up only a small share of the money, said Joao
Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of the Socio-Environmental
Institute. "In reality, these projects had a lot of impact in the
media, but very little impact on the ground," he said.
Eduardo Martins, the head of the government's environmental protection
agency, rejected the criticism, accusing the environmentalists of
"climatic opportunism." He added, "More than 1,000 people working on the
problem doesn't signify doing nothing."
But, he said in a telephone interview, "If you ask me if the prevention
for this burning season was adequate, I'd say no," and he acknowledged
that "with the time that we had after the fires in Roraima, the
preparation was not ideal."
The Amazon rain forest is home to the world's largest collection of animal
and plant species, as well as troves of bacteria and fungi whose medicinal
and nutritional value have yet to be studied.
Naturalists had counted the new environmental law, which went into effect
April 1, to be Brazil's most significant tool for protecting the
environment. For the first time, it gave a federal agency the authority to
enforce environmental protection statutes, and forced companies to clean
up pollution they had caused. Previously, some 94 percent of government
fines were routinely thrown out by the courts.
But last month, Cardoso signed an executive order granting industry a 10-
year protection from fines and criminal sentences for polluting if they
pledge to remedy the problem. On Wednesday, Cardoso modified the law once
again, reducing the moratorium to a maximum of six years.
Martins, the environmental protection chief, said he did not see the
moratorium as a step backward. "It's more a signal of maturity than
anything else," he said.