Amazon burns: Brazilian president accuses environmental groups of starting fires

Environmentalists are watching on in horror as widespread fires blaze through parts of the Amazon rainforest.

Brazil’s official monitoring agency is reporting a sharp increase in wildfires this year, with flames tearing through large swathes of the vital ecosystem.

But the country’s president has gone on the defensive in a bizarrely conspiratorial fashion by suggesting non-governmental organisations could be deliberately lighting them to make him look bad.

President Jair Bolsonaro - who took office in January - did not offer any substantiating evidence to back up his claims.

“On the question of burning in the Amazon, which in my opinion may have been initiated by NGOs because they lost money, what is the intention? To bring problems to Brazil,” the president told a steel industry congress in Brasilia, The Guardian reported.

“Maybe — I am not affirming it — these (NGO people) are carrying out some criminal actions to draw attention against me, against the government of Brazil,” Bolsonaro told reporters.

The right-wing populist president has been likened to a Brazilian version of Donald Trump, and he was quick to cast aspersions about his critics.

“There is a war going on in the world against Brazil, an information war,” Bolsonaro said.

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency monitoring deforestation and wildfires, said the country has seen a record number of wildfires this year, counting 74,155 as of Tuesday (local time) this week.

That’s an 84 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.

Earlier this month, the head of the space research institute was forced to leave his position after standing up to the president’s accusations that deforestation data had been manipulated to tarnish the image of his administration.

Fires in the Amazon are mostly used to clean up vast areas of land for farming or logging.

“It is very difficult to have natural fires in the Amazon,” Paulo Moutinho, co-founder of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute told the Associated Press.

“It happens but the majority come from the hand of humans.”

Fires can easily get out of control, especially now during the Amazon’s dry season, and spread to densely forested protected areas.

‘The world’s lungs are burning’

The issue of Amazon fires has been trending on social media with many calling for better protections to safeguard the critical rainforest, often referred to as the lungs of the planet because it is a major absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale took to Twitter on Thursday, saying the Amazon fires will “go down as one of the greatest tragedies of our times”.

“The Amazon is the lungs of the earth - producing more than 20% of the oxygen all life on earth needs to live,” he said.

“It's been burning for three weeks. I repeat: the world's biggest rainforest has been on fire for three weeks.

“Yet while the fire roars through countless precious ecosystems, the Brazilian government continues to sit on its hands and point the finger at environmental activists.”

Smoke sends Sao Paulo into darkness

Many online were quick to compare the subdued reaction to the Amazon fires with the spirited response after the Notre Dame cathedral went up in flames earlier this year.

“Everybody cried when a church burned down. Now this is happening in the Amazon Forest and nobody says a thing. This is what people call the world's lungs, and it's up in flames. The smoke cloud over Brazil is larger than a few European countries joined,” one woman wrote in a tweet that has been shared more than 67,000 times Thursday.

Satellite images from The World Meteorological Organization showed much of Brazil blanketed in smoke.

Meanwhile images coming out of São Paulo showed the city in darkness in the middle of the day, as residents compare the devastation to an “apocalypse”.

President Bolsonaro, who once threatened to leave the Paris climate accord, has repeatedly attacked environmental non-profit organisations, seen as obstacles in his quest to develop the country’s full economic potential, including in protected areas.

The president and his political allies have been urging more development and economic opportunities in the Amazon region, which they consider overly protected by current legislation.

With AP

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