Front Burner - Why is the Amazon rainforest burning?

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

On Monday, Canada pledged $15 million to help fight fires in the Amazon rainforest. That's on top of the $26.5 million the G7 pledged at the conclusion of this weekend's gathering in France. But why are so many of these fires ablaze in the first place? Today on Front Burner, we talk to Jake Spring. He's a Reuters correspondent based in Brazil and the host of the Foreign Correspondence podcast who has reported on the fires from up close.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. It smelled like a barbecue, that smell of charcoal burning just about everywhere. It was difficult to see the sun. Some fires were huge and they were sending smoke hundreds of feet into the air. Others were small. We saw an area that was quite eerie because it looked green and pristine, but there was smoke starting to come and curl around the green trees because that's how it starts in the underbrush before it goes up in flames.

And of course, once it's done burning, it's just a big charred area. So this is Jake Spring. He's a Reuters correspondent based in Brazil's capital, and he was in the Amazon last week witnessing the forest fires firsthand. I'm Jamie Poisson. This is FrontBurner. It's particularly creepy at night when the sky is aglow with an orange glow. You can see a fire kilometers away casting light several stories into the air. And also we saw one very up close at night that looked more like a raging yellow bonfire. You could see individual trees. It was probably 50 feet off the road we drove by on.

Wow. And just so that we can get a sense of the scale and significance of the Amazon, what does it look like when it's not burning? The Amazon is built up in the imagination of the world as this very striking thing. But it's actually, it's most impressive in how large and monotonous it is. It's like looking at the ocean. You know, it strikes me that forest fires in the Amazon, this is not new, right? Like there have been fires in this area before. And so how much worse are we talking about here? Like how many more fires this year versus previous years? So we're talking the last time I looked at the statistics, which I believe were current to

August 24th, there were almost 80,000 fires. And that was an increase of more than 80% over the previous year for the same period of year. Wow, 80%. Wow. Half of those had happened in August, and August isn't even over yet. So that's a lot of fires concentrated in one month. And so what makes this year's fires different from previous years? different from previous years? The difference this year is that President Jair Bolsonaro, since his campaign last year, has been railing against environmental enforcement. He's intent on opening up the Amazon to cattle ranchers, farmers, miners. He promised to end what he calls the, quote, uncontrolled party of environmental fines coming from IBAMA,

Brazil's environmental defense agency. And espousing rhetoric that people believe is inciting deforesters to burn more land, clear more land. And these deforesters, they're generally clearing land as a form of speculation. They go in and they take out the valuable trees and then they burn the rest to clear it. So it might be worth something for agricultural usage. Usually at first, a speculator might throw a few cows on there, mostly just to stake their claim. And then if they're able to sell it, somebody might use it for more intensive cow pasture for beef, or they could convert it to soy and plant soybeans or corn or other crops there. Can you give me some examples of why people might be getting the impression that they could set these fires, deforest more of the Amazon with like little or no consequences under Bolsonaro's government? Well, sure. So if you're a person in a remote area and say you're watching Globu, the biggest television channel or any television channel, really,

and you see the leader of the country saying environmental fines are out of control, we should stop this, stop this out of control industry of fines. stop this out-of-control industry of fines. Let's go develop protected areas such as indigenous land and other of what is known as conservation units. Let's introduce agriculture or let's introduce mining there. Take, for instance, the Yanomami Reserve. 9,000 natives live there. Here, we are in the state of Rio, and their reserve is twice the size of the state of Rio.

Don't tell me there isn't something wrong with this. And they see all this coming from the highest person in government, and there's an expectation that the government will not punish them. So essentially what's happening here is that people are going in and they're deforesting the land, they're cutting down the trees, and then they're setting fire to the land? deforesting the land, they're cutting down the trees, and then they're setting fire to the land? That's what is believed to be the case, yes. These fires, many people are saying, are not natural occurrence in the rainforest. That's up for some debate, but certainly the large increase is not entirely natural, and it coincides with a strong increase we've been seeing in deforestation this year, because like you said, they deforest and then they set fire to the land.

And it happens that we're several months into the dry season. So now when they set the fires, they're more likely to go out of control. You know, you mentioned before that President Jair Bolsonaro has made several comments that might encourage people or make people think that it's OK for them to do this, including that Brazil's environmental agency is just sort of in it for fines. For people who are listening, Jair Bolsonaro is, of course, a far-right populist leader and no stranger to saying sort of incredibly controversial and inflammatory things. You know, he has said before that he would rather his son be dead than gay.

He has called another politician, a female too ugly to be raped. And I'm wondering, what is Bolsonaro's response to the fires been so far? What is Bolsonaro's response to the fires been so far? So like you said, Bolsonaro is a right-wing populist who openly admires Donald Trump. I've always admired the United States, but I admire it even more since you have become president. And in many ways, takes his stylistic cues from Trump. And one of those things is that he often speaks just straight off the cuff, whatever he's thinking. So, I mean, last week we saw at first he called the fires normal.

Then he said the Amazon is so large, Brazil doesn't have the resources to fight it. Then the next day he said it could be that NGOs are setting the fires to undermine his government. Really, he blamed this on NGOs. Regarding the fires in the Amazon, I am under the impression that it could have been set by NGOs because they'd asked for funding. What was their intention? To cause problems for Brazil. Yeah, yeah. I mean, his government has had anti-NGO rhetoric since day one.

They basically see them as a colonialist tool for foreign nations to undermine Brazil, particularly in the Amazon. So they've been railing against NGOs for a long time. So this suggestion wasn't that out of the ordinary for him, even though it is potentially extremely inflammatory. Has his messaging changed at all since these fires started this season? He's continued to say that Brazil doesn't need the help of other nations from the latest comments that I've seen.

Forest fires happen all over the world, so this is no reason to impose international sanctions. Brazil will continue to be, as it is now, a country that is friendly with everyone and is responsible in protecting its Amazon forest. But he has changed a bit in that he's agreed to send in the military to offer support on fighting the fire. So that's happening in seven states that had requested government military support. So in terms of actions, he's changed a bit. You mentioned before that Bolsonaro has not wanted support from the international community. There has been an international spotlight on these fires. So

on Monday, G7 leaders agreed on a deal to provide 20 million U.S. in emergency aid to help fight the fires in Brazil. Emmanuel Macron called the Amazon irreplaceable, announcing the G7's monetary pledge. Our own Prime Minister, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, pledged an additional $15 million from Canada, along with water bombers. One of the things we've seen over the past years, as Canada has faced increasingly extreme wildfire events, is there is a global network of support and friends that lean on each other. We've had many people come to help Canada during our difficult years, Canada during our difficult years. And I'm very happy to be able to say that we will be there to support our friends in South America. And what difference could that money and equipment make, I suppose, if Bolsonaro chooses to accept it?

Yeah, that's a big question. I mean, by the time this airs, I'm not sure what he'll have decided. The environment minister has suggested that the government is open to the foreign contributions, but I have not seen a clear declaration from Bolsonaro himself. That said, should they accept this money? How will it be used? Will it be effective? From what I've heard from talking to experts, they say the fires that are going, many of them, unless they're small fires, cannot be put out by humans. That we've seen with the California wildfires where the U.S. had much better equipment and it still took a long, long time for those fires to be put out. The fire burned through the town of Paradise in Northern California so quickly that crews stopped trying to control the blaze.

Instead, they focused on getting people out alive, and by morning, most of the community lay in ruin. What can be done is more prevention. They can stop people from setting more fires, both this year and in future years. But it's unclear if the government would choose to use the resources that way or not. Right. These fires, they have gained a lot of attention from celebrities and on social media. The beauty of biodiversity and the cultures that live there, it's incredibly tragic.

I think that I immediately felt depressed. Leonardo DiCaprio and Madonna shared pictures of them last week, but it later came out that these pictures were old or not even in the Amazon, some of the pictures that have been circulating. Is there a sense that these fires are being either overblown or misunderstood internationally? Listen, it's funny that these old photos are getting shared because that's the reason why when I was traveling around for eight, nine, 10 days, there was a photographer and videographer with me. And the photographer took some amazing photos, for example, of this fire we saw at night. And this went on the front page of the New York Times, on the front page of the Washington Post, because simply there is not the same investment

of sending people out to the Amazon to take these photos. And oftentimes, individual publications are not sending people out. So they've got to rely what's in stock, what's on the wires. You know, people make fun of the television channel Global for showing the same picture of deforestation over and over again, year after year. And it's not that it's not happening. It's just that people aren't going out and getting the new photos. Right. And, you know, as you mentioned earlier, of course, fires in the Amazon aren't new. It's just the striking increase that we're seeing of the fires and the deforestation. We talked about benefits on the ground from the deforestation,

but can we talk about who suffers on the ground? There are, of course, people who live in the Amazon. And how is this affecting them? Sure. I mean, first off, like I said, there's a cloud of smoke everywhere I went. And some people told me family members with asthma or who are particularly of advanced age suffer health problems from it. In terms of deforestation itself, the indigenous communities often suffer the most, and they're often the ones who are battling against this. I visited two indigenous communities in the last two weeks, and one of them pointed to the smoke in the air and said, look, smoke gets smoke everywhere. It didn't used to be like this.

And this particular member of an indigenous tribe said that he blamed in part deforestation and agriculture and development coming to the region. And fewer trees meant regional climate change. So regionally, it's hotter. And fewer trees meant regional climate change, so regionally it's hotter. The loggers arrived and it was then that our climate started to change. So in 10 or 20 years, if there's no preserved land, someone living here, this will all cease to exist. So we blame this for the increase in the fires. We also visited another indigenous tribe that really demonstrated how frustrating it can be to try to combat deforestation. They showed us one area the size of a

couple of football fields that had been deforested, and they said it started four years ago, and then they came back the next year, and then they came back the next year. And only after three years of denouncing it or making complaints to authorities did authorities come and kick out the loggers. But then the loggers crossed the street, crossed the road, and started deforesting a new area. And we were able to observe that area by drone. It was also a very large area of downed trees. And they got chased out of there. And then they showed us a logging path and the logging path means that an area is being targeted for logging meaning logging soon but going to be coming to a third area so it can be very difficult when in a big forest like this when the deforesters

can just pick up from one place and go to another place in this particular case they were loggers and not they didn't then subsequently set fire to the land. At least they haven't yet. It's a blight on life. You are seeing the lives wasted over there. All of these trees had lives. They all needed to live, each in their own place. People look here and you can see the damage.

It's the goal of the man to finish it off. What do these people tell you about how willing they are to keep fighting this fight, to protect this rainforest? So in that second area where it was kind of a cat and mouse game with deforesters, a 73-year-old man who had lived there his whole life, a member of the tribe, said... It's destruction. What we want for this place, for the efforts that I spoke about, for this forest, I will go on until my last drop of blood.

Which is quite dramatic, but also, I mean, we've seen indigenous leaders be killed in the past when fighting with illegal miners or other people who are seeking to encroach on their land. Mm-hmm. You know, I know that this is a thread that we've been pulling throughout this conversation, but the significance of the Amazon, of this great swath of rainforest, what happens if the deforestation continues, if this rainforest continues to be destroyed? So the fear is if the rainforest continues to be destroyed, that it will enter a self-sustaining cycle of forest dieback, in which the forest converts to a very degraded savanna and so it absorbs much less carbon dioxide and also in this period of degradation which would take 30 to 50 years it would release about 200

billion tons of carbon dioxide but what they would reach this tipping point they would think if at first they thought if 40 percent of the Amazon is destroyed, not just in Brazil, but everywhere, they would encounter this tipping point. But now they're saying it's much lower, it's 20 to 25%. Because of global warming, increasing temperatures and increasing fires, it means that the amount of destruction actually has to be lower to trigger this. And climate scientists told me we're right now at 15 to 17% deforestation. So 20 to 25% isn't that far away. If we lose the Amazon, or if the Amazon turns into this savanna, how does this affect our ability to combat climate change around the world?

So I don't have exact numbers on it, but I've talked to Brazil's top climate scientist, a guy named Carlos Nobre. And he said it would make it a lot more difficult to meet this 1.5 to 2 degree goal of limiting the temperature rise. That's 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius to avoid the most catastrophic changes of climate change. So if this happens, it would become much, much harder to meet that goal. The Amazon was buying you some time that it's not going to buy anymore. That's research scientist Carlos Quezada, or Beto as people here call him. Before, the Amazon forest as a whole was taking the emissions of all cars in the planet. And now it will stop. The effects of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere are going to be much higher. And CO2 will grow in the atmosphere in a much, much higher rate.

And, you know, you mentioned that Bolsonaro is sharing some videos that show that he might be taking this seriously. Are you seeing any other signs that the deforestation might be stopped to avoid reaching that tipping point that you were talking about? As of yet, it's hard to say what will happen long term. I mean, we've been seeing short term moves with the military and the military having planes dump water on the fire. But in terms of the long term trajectory and Brazil's long term environmental policy, we have yet to see a shift on the part of Bolsonaro and his administration. You mentioned earlier that you have spoken to people who have had their health affected by these fires. And I know that you've spent quite a bit of time around them now. Has it affected you at all?

Honestly, no. But I lived in China for six years and the pollution there is pretty bad. So, I mean, honestly, I was looking around and thought, this kind of looks like Beijing, the particulate matter we often see in the air there. Wow. It is really striking to hear you compare the Amazon to Beijing. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the pictures of clouds of the the airpocalypse. Very much so. That sometimes happens in China. Yeah.

Jake, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. I'm really appreciative. Sure thing. Thanks for talking to me. So if you're looking for some context behind the quest to stay within this 1.5 degrees of warming, we did this episode a while back with David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth. It was really helpful for me. It brought a lot of threads together. You can find it in our feed.

Also, it's worth noting that what's happening in the Amazon right now, well, these aren't the only fires being called a crisis. At the G7, French President Emmanuel Macron also floated the idea of a similar aid package to help sub-Saharan African countries fight fires raging in the area. People are drawing direct parallels between what's happening in South America and what's happening in Africa. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and see you tomorrow.