13 hours Ago By Himanshu Nitnaware
Brazil closed out 2024 with another grim milestone, following its worst drought on record. Between January and December, over 30.87 million hectares of wilderness were consumed by flames, an area roughly the size of state Maharashtra in India or Italy.
This was the country’s most devastating wildfire in recent years, according to MapBiomas, a consortium of non-governmental organisations, universities and technology firms monitoring Brazil’s biomes since 2019. There was a 79 percent increase in burned area from 2023, when 17.24 million hectares were destroyed — an increase of 13.
63 million hectares. This figure is the highest since 2019, when 18.08 million hectares were incinerated.
September 2024 was particularly catastrophic, with 10.63 million hectares were in a single month, according to the monitoring agency. Amazônia was the worst-hit region, losing 17.
9 million hectares, followed by the Cerrado with 9.7 million hectares, Pantanal with 1.9 million hectares and Mata Atlântica with 1 million hectares.
The number of fire outbreaks in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 43.7 per cent in the first 11 months of the year compared to 2023, according to the Rainforest Foundation US, an organisation working to protect Indigenous people. “In the first 11 months of the year, the number of fire outbreaks in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 43.
7 per cent compared to 2023. And by November 30, a total of 134,979 fire outbreaks had been recorded, up from 93,938 during the same period last year,” it stated. The all-time record, set in 2007, remains at 181,000 outbreaks.
Brazil’s Amazon had already witnessed a significant increase in forest in 2023 an increase by 35.4 per cent compared to 2022. The rise in wildfires is closely tied to climate change, rising global temperatures and the El Niño phenomenon.
2024 was also the hottest year on record for the planet. In a statement, the Rainforest Foundation US stated, “Several factors have contributed to the massive increase in fires in the Amazon. The region is experiencing drier conditions, a phenomenon closely linked to climate change and intensified by El Niño.
” “This year the region also experienced a historic drought for the second year in a row, fueling fires that spread through native vegetation. Low water levels in the region’s rivers made it difficult to combat the fires, leaving Indigenous and riverside villages inaccessible,” the statement added. The fires have intensified long-term concerns about Brazil’s ecosystems.
Almost a quarter (23 per cent) of Brazil’s territory — an estimated 199.1 million hectares — has burned at least once between 1985 and 2023. The Cerrado and Amazon alone accounted for 86 per cent of this area.
Frequent wildfires and droughts are weakening the Amazon’s ability to regenerate, increasing the risk of a die-off event. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May 2024 found that between 2001 and 2019, the Amazon experienced three “once-in-a-century” droughts. These events have left 37 per cent of the mature Amazon forest struggling to recover, with scientists warning of an impending ecological tipping point.
These are early indicators of dynamic systems approaching a critical threshold, beyond which the Amazon may no longer function as a rainforest, the study cautioned, attributing the trend to climate change-driven ecosystem collapse..
