74,155 fires have occurred in the Amazon this year, according to Brazil´s National Institute of Space Research, which represents a rate increase of 84 % in comparison with the same period last year.
The vital importance of the Amazon lays in the fact that it absorbs greenhouses gases that otherwise damage the planet. Not to mention the indigenous tribes that inhabited the region and Live on its resources. That´s why the Amazon has been qualified “the lungs of the world”.
So why is this extensive region on fire becoming a big problem for mankind?
Intentional deforestation for business motives
The main reason is that once the Amazon has been left free of trees and barren, the region can be used for agriculture and raising cattle. And even though this practice is illegal, no vigilance is being brought to bear by the current government, according to Nigel Sizer, chief officer of Rainforest Alliance; a practice that, in the words of the same functionary, is being encouraged by President Jair Bolsonaro himself.
Nigel Sizer has stated much of “what is happening is illegal”, however, the government has turned a blind eye by allowing logging in the Amazon. But the culpability for the fires has been attributed by President Bolsonaro to non-profit environmental organisations that in this way would be ruining the image of his administration.
Something he himself has no proof of. "Maybe. I'm not saying that" he said.
Trees and animal species are easily destroyed
Objections around the world are building. The protests “we are seeing now”, says Sizer, “is the first wave of that”. Trees and animal species are easily destroyed. Fires are not a frequent or natural phenomenon due to the humidity the Amazon shelters, thus protecting itself.
Likewise, animals and plants are not malleable to fire and they are easily destroyed. “Different," says Sizer, "to what happens in North America forest species”.
Siding with Nigel Sizer, Adrian Forsyth, co-founder of Amazon Conservation Association, says regarding Bolsonaro´s administration, that had they an “enlightened President in Brazil” they would have put an end to illegal desertification as “they do in the prevention of robbery and murder”.
Forsyth deepens into his opinion stating that the rain-factory condition of the Amazon “helps to generate rains and to agriculture growing across the Americas”, which is vital for the production and supplies of basic food. And without the “Amazon carbon absorption the climate harm crisis becomes increasingly unavoidable”, he says.
Moira Birss from Amazon Watch says the indigenous and other people that live in or in the vicinity of the forest “face the most immediate harm”. Many people, she says, have come to this organisation of which she is the finance campaign director, to ask in what way it can help. By making donations to Brazilian environmental groups, she suggested, even though it is mainly the “responsibility of the government to put an end to the situation”.