October 12, 2021

06:10

Victória Sales – from Cenarium

MANAUS – Data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) indicated that in the first week of October the State of Acre had 311 fires spots detected by the Institute’s satellites. By the 7th, the state had accumulated more than eight thousand records. In an exclusive conversation with CENARIUM, environmentalist Carlos Durigan pointed out that the fires in the area are directly related to the expansion of farming activities and the lack of control over this process.

According to Durigan, another worrying point is the burnings even during the rainiest months of the year. “This shows that the lack of control over the use and occupation of land serves as a factor in the intensification of deforestation and associated fires, since it is not just a matter of months of drought or the appearance of accidental fire”, he reported.

“What we see is that there is a process that associates deforestation and illegal occupation of public lands, and also a lack of care by rural producers in the case of private properties, since there is no control or awareness to be more careful with their legal reserves and also to avoid the use of fire, and when they do it, they should do it in a controlled way”, explained Carlos Durigan.

Another important factor that has contributed to this increase, according to Durigan, are the weaknesses of the inspection agencies. “The fragility of the environmental management has opened the way for the lack of control to take hold and even function as a green light for degradation”, said the environmentalist.

Accumulated

Data from the Burning Program, from Inpe, point out that until August 2021 Acre registered 2,140 fire focuses, which brought the numbers close to a sad record for the year. The data became greater than the accumulated for the same period in the previous year, which closed with 1,641 focuses, considering an increase of 30% in the months evaluated. The figures for 2021 were second only to 2019, which recorded 2,240 fires, and 2005 with 5,405 fires.

The Acre Environment Institute (Imac) pointed out that from January 1 to July 23, 74 infraction notices were registered, being fines, embargoes and seizures, totaling more than R$ 3 million in fines.

Increase

Among the municipalities that registered most fires in Acre are: Feijó and Tarauacá with 1,477 and 998 fires, respectively. In the first nine months of this year, the state accumulated the highest number of fires in 11 years, according to data from Inpe’s Burning Program. In September, 3,982 fires were registered, leaving the state in 5th place in the ranking of the places with the most fires in Brazil.

Acre had registered 7,401 cumulative focuses between January and September 2020, representing 4% of the fires in a year. In September 2020, the state closed with 3,357 fires, representing an increase of more than 18% for this year.

Professor at the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo (USP) and member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Paulo Artaxo, recently told O Globo newspaper that the country needs to stop doing short-term planning and focus on forward-thinking public policies, aimed at a horizon longer than the duration of a single government.

“We always blame the weather because it is raining less. But the responsibility is ours, the environmental policies, including those of the current government. The lack of rain is the result of global climate change. We are seeing the expected disaster”, he said.

The specialist recalls that for years science has been warning about the consequences of deforestation in the Amazon. It reduces the so-called evapotranspiration (evaporation of water from the soil plus transpiration by plants), and the result is less rainfall in Central Brazil. This is where the Pantanal, the world’s largest floodplain, is located.