Brazil’s Amazon fires off to record 2024 start as green union blames firefighting budget cut
- May 23, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Brazil’s Amazon fires off to record 2024 start as green union blames firefighting budget cut
Sub: Geography
Sec: Mapping
Context:
- Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has experienced its largest blazes on record in the first four months of the year
Details:
- Partial blame on lower government spending on firefighting.
- President Lula da Silva aims to protect the Amazon and enhance Brazil’s climate policy leadership.
- Record drought, driven by El Nino and global warming, contributing to dry conditions and fires.
- Fires are generally ignited by people clearing land for agriculture.
- The firefighting budget for environmental agency Ibama is 24% lower than in 2023.
- 380 firefighters were sent to the hardest-hit northern Amazon state of Roraima.
Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA):
- Ibama is a federal agency under the Ministry of Environment, which has the following purposes: exercise the environmental police role; implement proceedings of the national policies for the environment related to environmental permits, environment quality control, authorization of use of natural resources and its supervision, environmental monitoring and control; and perform subsidiary actions of Union competence in compliance with environmental regulations.
ASCEMA:
- The Brazilian National Association of Environmental Careers (ASCEMA) is a nonprofit that organizes the rights of workers from an environmental perspective.
About the Amazon rainforest:
- The Amazon rainforests cover about 80 per cent of the basin and as per NASA’s Earth Observatory, they are home to nearly a fifth of the world’s land species and are also home to about 30 million people including indigenous groups and several isolated tribes.
- The Amazon basin is huge with an area covering over 6 million square kilometres, it is nearly twice the size of India.
- The Amazon forests have absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere, helping to moderate the global climate
- The basin produces about 20 per cent of the world’s flow of freshwater into the oceans. Over the last few years, the forest has been under threat due to deforestation and burning.
- Forest fires have doubled since 2013.
- Pantanal wetland:
- The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world’s largest tropical wetland area and the world’s largest flooded grasslands.
- It is located mostly within Brazil and extends to some portions of Bolivia and Paraguay.
- It is fed through the Paraguay River and tributaries.
Source: TH