In a press statement yesterday (August 21) about the fires that for more than a week have been raging across the Brazilian Amazon, Christian Poirier, Program Director of Amazon Watch, asserted that: “The unprecedented fires ravaging the Amazon are an international tragedy and a dangerous contribution to climate chaos. This devastation is directly related to President Bolsonaro's anti-environmental rhetoric, which erroneously frames forest protections and human rights as impediments to Brazil's economic growth. Farmers and ranchers understand the president's message as a license to commit arson with wanton impunity, in order to aggressively expand their operations into the rainforest."

According to a local newspaper, Folha do Progresso, the fires in the South East of the State of Pará were deliberately started by local landowners, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro’s repeated attacks on environmental policies, control bodies and activists.  "We need to show the president that we want to work and the only way is to clear the land. And to the way to create and clean our pastures is with fire,” one of the organizers of the demonstration told the newspaper, in reference to a coordinated “Fire Day” protest.

Already on Saturday August 10, the main city on the region, Novo Progreso, registered 124 outbreaks of fire, an increase of 300% compared to the previous day.  And on Sunday 11, there were 203 cases.  Another city, Altamira, registered 194 cases on the 10^th and 237 on the 11^th.

Some 72,843 forest fires have been registered this year in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, according to the National Institute for Space Research, which monitors fires using satellite images; an 84% increase compared with the same period last year.

According to Moira Birss, Amazon Watch’s Finance Campaign Director: “Indigenous people of the Amazon have been sounding the alarm about risks to the rainforest for years and resisting the destruction - sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Now that the world is finally paying attention, it’s important to also understand that governments and companies around the world are emboldening Bolsonaro’s toxic policies when they enter trade agreements with his government or invest in agribusiness companies operating in the Amazon.”