After enduring its worst drought on record in 2024, Brazil closed the year with another alarming event: between January and December, 30.86 million hectares of wild land burned – an area larger than Italy.
The figure published in a new report is 79% higher than in 2023 and the largest ever recorded. Fire watcher Since its launch in 2019 by MapBiomas, an initiative of NGOs, universities and technology companies that monitors biomes in Brazil.
These data may constitute an embarrassment as Brazil prepares to host the thirtieth session of the Conference of the Parties in Belém, the capital of the Amazonian state of Pará, in November.
Not only was the state most affected by the fires, accounting for 24% of the total area burned, but the Amazon region was also the most affected of Brazil’s six biomes, at 58%. The area burned in the Amazon in 2024 exceeds the total area burned across the country in 2023.
“It was a ridiculous increase,” said Ani Alencar, coordinator of MapBiomas, adding that for the first time, forest areas were the most affected, surpassing grasslands and pastures. “Once a fire hits a forest, it takes years and years to recover… and if there’s another drought and that forest isn’t protected, it will burn again,” she said.
Researchers believe that severe drought between 2023 and 2024 – The worst since the government started keeping records in 1950 – Which was exacerbated by the El Niño phenomenon, which was a decisive factor in the escalation of forest fires.
“But that’s just one part of the equation. The other has to do with human activity,” Alencar said, referring primarily to the agricultural sector, which often uses fire to clear pastures, as well as deforestation, which has declined significantly under President Luís’s third term. Inacio Lula da Silva, but still not eliminated.
“There were also cases where fires simply broke out in the middle of the forest, indicating possible criminal activity,” the researcher said.
At the peak of the fires in September, there were suspicions that the fires may have been part of a criminal backlash against federal efforts to stamp out deforestation and illegal mining. Federal Police 119 investigations were opened into suspected arson in 2024 alonean increase from an average of 70 in previous years.
Alencar fears that 2025 will witness a similar scenario. “We will need a very strong rainy season to truly replenish the soil, and that has not happened yet,” she said.
Despite the grim statistics, she says the blame cannot lie with Lula’s administration. “If last year we saw the level of deforestation that we will see in 2022 [when the climate change denier Jair Bolsonaro was in charge]“Combined with the climate conditions of 2024, this would have been the worst-case scenario,” she said.
“One clear finding is that forest conservation goes beyond fighting deforestation. We also need to focus on fighting climate change,” Alencar said.