Amazon’s wildfire alarm

The Andes (MAAP) Amazon Forest Monitoring Project (MAAP) recently released a report showing that in 2020, the largest rainforest on the Amazon planet lost 2.3 million hectares of primary forest, up 17% from the previous year. .

Cleio Junior, a firefighter at the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Natural Resources, discovered a dead anteater while he was on a fire control mission near the Amazonas state. Photo: Reuters. The above data is based on the research results of MAAP when conducting the analysis of very high resolution satellite images and data, recorded in the territories of all countries in the Amazon Delta, including Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana and Surinam. Accordingly, the Amazon’s primary forest area lost in the past year alone is equivalent to that of the Central American nation of El Salvador. The countries with the most loss of Amazon primary forests in 2020 are Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, respectively. Still according to the MAAP, more than 65% of deforestation of the entire Amazon region in 2020 was recorded in Brazil. South America’s largest country by acreage has lost a total of 1.5 million hectares of forest in the past year, up more than 13% from the year before. The area of ​​deforestation in Brazil is nearly twice the size of Puerto Rico and is mainly concentrated in the south of the country. Meanwhile, the deforestation area in Bolivia in 2020 amounted to a record 240,000 hectares, mainly due to the fires occurring in the Southeast of the country that destroyed the forests in the ecosystems. Chiquitano and Chaco slices. In the case of Peru, the country lost 190,000 hectares of primary forest last year, up 18% from 2019 and also a record number. The main cause of deforestation in Peru is attributed to the burning of forests for arable land. Since mid-2019, data from the early warning satellite system showed that the deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil tended to increase, to the fastest in a decade. According to the Brazilian Institute of Aerospace Research (INPE), the alarm system recorded forest deforestation in May up to 739 km2. This is higher than the 550 square kilometers recorded in May 2018, and twice as high as the area of ​​forest that was destroyed two years ago. According to the head of INPE, Claudio Almeida, 2019 is a “bad year” for the Amazon. As the country with the most area of ​​Amazon, but Brazil is also the country with the most forest loss in 2018 with nearly 16,187 km2. The main reason is due to deforestation for livestock, soybean cultivation and mining. According to the data of Mapbiomas – a research project on the disappearance of protective forest areas in the Amazon forest, in the last 30 years there has been 953,000 hectares of lost forest including protected areas, lands indigenous and inland lands. It is recognized that this figure is equivalent to 6 times the size of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and South America. The results of Mapbiomas add that, excluding protection forests, the Amazon forest area destroyed in the past 30 years has reached 39.8 million hectares, equivalent to 19% of the total natural forest area ever existed. in 1985. Satellite imagery also shows that 84% of the lost area of ​​the world’s largest rainforest has become agricultural land, including pastures and pastures. farmyard. In early December 2020, the European Union (EU) envoy to Brazil, Ambassador Ignacio Ybanez said, until Brazil has not committed to preventing deforestation of the Amazon, the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and the South American Common Market (Mercosur) will not be approved by the parliament of the EU member states to come into force. This happens when the world is concerned about the “green lung of the Earth” that is Amazon being burned more and more. The EU Embassy in Brazil mentioned the deforestation of the Amazon and participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change. In fact, the Amazon wildfire is already at an alarming rate. It not only affects a few countries but is also global because it is the largest forest in the world with immeasurable value.