The fires in the region that is now one of the main areas of devastation in the Amazon, whose re-elected governors are Bolsonarists and where Jair Bolsonaro (PL) obtained a wide vote, had an expressive and unprecedented increase in the days that followed the defeat of the president at the polls .
Satellite data from Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) recorded 3,332 hot spots between the 1st and 16th of November in Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, a region known as Amacro. In the same period in 2021, there were 253 fires in the three states. The increase was 1,216%.
The evolution of fires in the last ten years, taking into account the first half of November, shows that fire peaks and increases in their incidence are unprecedented.
November is a month in which there are no longer so many fires in the Amazon, due to the beginning of the rainiest period. The months that concentrate fires are September and October.
The reality at Amacro subverts this logic. In Rondônia and Acre there were more fires in November than in October, taking into account the same period of 16 days.
In the first half of November, Inpe satellites detected 1,602 hot spots in Rondônia. In the same period last year, there were only 84.
These fires were concentrated mainly in the region of Porto Velho and Nova Mamoré, with 457 hot spots, according to the monitoring of the Programa Queimadas.
In Rondônia, Bolsonaro obtained more than 70% of the valid votes in the second round of the election. The governor, Marcos Rocha (União), is a Bolsonarist and was re-elected. Rocha has been aligned with the president since the beginning of his term, including the adoption of an environmental policy that makes inspection and licensing more flexible.
Bolsonaro also obtained in the second round more than 70% of the valid votes in Acre, whose re-elected governor, Gladson Cameli (PP), is a Bolsonarist. In the state, in 16 days of November, there were 897 hot spots, according to Inpe data. Last year, taking into account the same time frame, there were only 7. The fires were concentrated in Sena Madureira.
The third Bolsonarist governor of Amacro is Wilson Lima (União), re-elected in the second round. Deforestation and fires are concentrated in the south of the state, which is the region that integrates the arc of devastation. The satellites detected 833 hot spots from November 1st to 16th, compared to 162 in the same period last year, with a predominance in Lábrea.
Questioned by Sheet regarding the significant increase in fires, the governments of Rondônia and Amazonas, the ministries of Justice and the Environment and Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) did not respond.
In a note, the president of Imac (Institute for the Environment of Acre), Nelson Sales, said that November has been atypical in 2022. “The dry period in the south of the Amazon has extended. expected for the entire month. The unseasonal drought led to an increase in fires, used culturally to clean up rural areas.”
The government fights against environmental crimes, according to Sales, with more than R$ 13 million in fines imposed until October and seizures of wood and trucks. “The state provides technical guidance for rural producers in order to bring cultivation and creation techniques to rural people that reduce the impact and promote the rational use of our resources”, stated the president of Imac.
Pará remains in the lead of fires in the Amazon, with 2,968 outbreaks in the first half of November, but there was a drop in relation to October and much more expressive numbers in other years.
The governments of the Legal Amazon states were present at COP27, the UN climate conference, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. At the event, they sought international resources linked to the reduction of deforestation and emissions.
The Director of Science at Ipam (Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon), Ane Alencar, claims to have noticed the disproportionate increase in hot spots, especially in the first ten days after the election, in the southwest of the Amazon.
The fires confirm the increase in deforestation detected since August in the Inpe devastation alerts, points out Alencar.
“There is still a month and a half until the government turns around. Some of the environmental criminals are taking advantage of the continued absence of the federal government and its institutions that act in the fight against environmental illicit. And local governments in the region follow with their eyes closed”, he says. the director of IPAM.
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