Riyaz Patel
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has accused non-governmental organizations of “burning down the Amazon rainforest to hurt his government,” as a growing global outcry against the wildfires raged through social media.
Wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil’s space research center INPE, as concerns grow over Bolsonaro’s environmental policy.
The surge marks an 83 percent increase over the same period of 2018, the agency said earlier this week, and is the highest since records began in 2013.
Presented without evidence and disputed by environmental and climate experts, Bolsonaro’s comments enraged critics and fanned a growing social media campaign over the dangers to the Amazon, one of the world’s key bulwarks against climate change.
A week ago, NASA noted that the fires were large enough that they could be spotted from space.
#PrayforAmazonas was the world’s top trending topic on Twitter Wednesday, and millions of people took to Instagram and Facebook to share concerns over the future of the Amazon.
With global awareness growing, Bolsonaro’s comments risk creating a spiraling crisis for his government, imperiling an EU-Mercosur trade pact and upsetting key agribusiness clients.
“Everything indicates” that NGOs were going to the Amazon to “set fire” to the forest, Bolsonaro said in a Facebook Live broadcast Wednesday morning.
When asked if he had evidence to back up his claims, he said he had “no written plan,” adding “that’s not how it’s done.”
Since Thursday, INPE said satellite images spotted 9,507 new forest fires in the country, mostly in the Amazon basin, home to the world’s largest tropical forest seen as vital to countering global warming.
Images show the northernmost state of Roraima covered in dark smoke. Amazonas declared an emergency in the south of the state and in its capital Manaus on Aug. 9. Acre, on the border with Peru, has been on environmental alert since Friday due to the fires.
Former presidential candidate and environment minister Marina Silva took to Twitter to criticize Bolsonaro.
“The Amazon is on fire,” she wrote. “The president says NGOs may be behind this. The lack of commitment to the truth is a chronic pathology. This irresponsible attitude only aggravates an environmental disaster in Brazil.”
Speaking later on Wednesday, Bolsonaro also took aim at the Paris climate accord, saying that if it were so good, the United States would have stayed in it. But he added that for the time being, Brazil would remain in the pact.
Earlier this month, Norway and Germany suspended funding for projects to curb deforestation in Brazil after becoming alarmed by changes to the way projects were selected under Bolsonaro.
