Berliner Tageblatt - Brazil records 62% jump in area burned by forest fires: monitor

Brazil experienced historic fires last year, particularly in the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest on the planet that is key to absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

According to the monitoring platform MapBiomas, the fires razed 30 million hectares (115,830 square miles) last year, a 62 percent jump compared to the 18.5 million hectares burned annually on average.

MapBiomas, which began satellite recording in 1985, said that the Amazon accounted for more than half of the fires suffered in Brazil, with 15.6 million hectares affected -- more than double its historical average.

The record is discouraging for the government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will host the UN's COP30 climate conference in November in the Amazonian city of Belem.

The unprecedented drought that hit Brazil in 2024, aggravated by climate change, contributed to the record number of fires.

Authorities and experts attribute the fires to human activity and link them to the often illegal clearing of land for grazing and agriculture.

"The combination of highly flammable vegetation, low humidity, and the use of fire has created the perfect conditions for it (fires) to spread on a large scale," said Felipe Martenexen, MapBiomas's Amazon coordinator.

"Once the forest burns, it ends up losing moisture and forest cover," he said.

"It ends up altering that entire microclimate, making it more vulnerable next time to new fires," he warned at a press conference.

The Pantanal, a natural region encompassing the world's largest wetland which is mostly in Brazil, also suffered devastating fires last year. Sixty-two percent of this area has been affected by fire at least once in the last 40 years.

Also setting a new record in 2024 was the Atlantic Forest, one of the most threatened biomes on the planet which stretches along Brazil's ocean coast and extends into neighbouring Paraguay and Argentina.

The 1.2 million hectares burned was the largest area affected by fire since 1985 and represented a 261 percent increase compared to the historical average in this region.

MapBiomas's report also revealed that 2024 was Brazil's second-worst year for fires since 2007, with nearly a third of the area burned last year suffering from mega-fires of more than 100,000 hectares.

These large fires represent a worrying change in the country's historical fire patterns, noted MapBiomas experts.

C.Meier--BTB