Lula visits Amazon amid fire pandemic. September 11, 2024

Many fires in northern Brazil

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Lula visits Amazon amid fire pandemic.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday announced new measures to alleviate the drought in the Brazilian Amazon, as his government faces growing pressure to combat a “pandemic” of fires.

Brazil has been plagued by a historic drought that experts link to climate change, causing fires to spread more easily and producing clouds of smoke that have reached neighboring Uruguay and Argentina.

The country's Supreme Court ordered immediate government action to contain what it called a “fire pandemic”, which is also threatening to destroy the biodiversity-rich Pantanal sanctuary.

“We take the need to combat drought, deforestation, and fires very seriously,” said Lula in the northern state of Amazonas.

Accompanied by several ministers, the president visited riverside communities that live in the world's largest rainforest and are suffering from the worst drought in 70 years that has hit Latin America's largest country.

The high temperatures have dried up the rivers used by the isolated communities for navigation, food, and water supply.

The Brazilian government has announced dredging works on the Amazon River and other waterways and the delivery of water purifiers.

In the state capital, Manaus, Lula announced the creation of an authority to deal with “extreme climate risks”.

“Our focus must be on adaptation,” he said.

The new authority was among Lula's campaign promises for his third government (2023-2026), the brainchild of his environment minister, Marina Silva.

“These events are going to become more and more frequent, more and more intense,” said Marina.

São Paulo, Latin America's largest city, was the most polluted metropolis in the world on Tuesday, for the second day in a row, according to Swiss-based air quality monitoring company IQAir.

Lula said that “the situation is delicate” and getting worse every year.

With more than 5,000 active fires on Tuesday, Brazil accounts for 76% of the areas affected by fires in South America, according to data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) published by official media.

So far this year, around 6.7 million hectares have been burned in the Brazilian Amazon, which corresponds to 1.6% of the rainforest, according to official figures.

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