August 03, 2020

Andrew Campbell 

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, INPE - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, reported on August 1 that satellite images have shown 6,803 rainforest fires in the Amazon during July, a rise of 28% up from 5,318 in July 2019.

According to INPE’s data, the first 6 months of 2020 have already hit the worst on record for deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon, with 3,069 square kilometers (1,185 square miles) surged in the rainforest fires.

Activists accuse Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging farming, ranching, and mining activities, as he has been in favor of opening up the rainforest to agriculture and industry, which resulted in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Since July 16, the Brazilian government has banned starting fires in the Pantanal wetlands and the Amazon region for 4 months, but experts still blamed that the government's measures and the responses have not been effective enough. Critics fear rainforest fires in Brazil's Amazon: August will be a difficult month and September will be even worse. 

Moreover U.S. space agency NASA indicated what was uneasy to control was the fires planned for agriculture and land clearing.