Brazilian Amazon Faces Huge Fires

International donors agreed on Monday to free up more than $500 million in aid to protect tropical rainforests, including the Amazon where wildfires are raging, France's president announced at a U.N. meeting shunned by Brazil.

The Brazilian Amazon is facing its worst spate of forest fires since 2010, prompting a global outcry and worries that destruction of parts of the world's largest rainforest could hurt demand for Brazil's exports.

protect tropical rainforests

Many of the fires sweeping through the Amazon are thought to have been started deliberately in Brazil, with environmentalists blaming speculators who burn vegetation to clear it in hopes of selling the land to farmers and ranchers.

Meanwhile, prompted by the Amazon fires in Brazil and Bolivia, 230 global investors with $16.2 trillion in assets have issued a strongly worded statement warning hundreds of unnamed companies to either meet their commodities supply chain deforestation commitments or risk economic consequences.

Amazon fires 

The statement was published by Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), an international network of investors and Ceres, a U.S. non-profit which works with investors to promote sustainability.

Noteworthy, the Amazon is often described as "the lungs of the world" because of its vast ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

A third of the fires this season occurred in undesignated forests  unprotected areas vulnerable to land-grabbing and unregistered lands, the IPAM report found. Conservation sites saw a surprising increase in the number of fire outbreaks this year, twice the number than the average between 2010 and 2018.

Forests worldwide, and rainforests in particular, play a crucial role in stabilising our climate by preventing desertification and landslides and storing excess carbon dioxide, while accommodating about 80 per cent of the world’s terrestrial biopersity. They are one of the most valuable natural assets that we have and it is imperative that we protect them. If our ambitious pursuits destroy nature, there will be no one left to tell our story.