Amazon fires hit 5-year high as Brazil's deforestation surge accelerates

In August 2022, satellite instruments recorded 33,116 fires burning across the Brazilian Amazon—the highest monthly count in nearly five years and the worst August for fire in twelve years. The surge came during the dry season, when conditions naturally favor both deforestation and combustion, but this year the numbers told a story of accelerating destruction. The worst single day arrived on August 22, when fire outbreaks reached levels not seen in fifteen years.

The fires are not accidents. They are set deliberately, almost without exception, to clear land for cattle ranching or to burn trees that have already been felled and left to dry. The problem is control: these fires routinely escape their intended boundaries and spread into untouched forest. Ane Alencar, who coordinates the Mapbiomas Fire project through a network of nonprofits, universities, and technology startups, explained the mechanics plainly. After an unusually wet early August that had briefly slowed the burning, the blazes resumed with intensity. "The deforestation rate is very high," Alencar told the Associated Press. "That means there are many fallen trees ready to burn." She predicted September would bring even fiercer conditions.

The fires are not confined to remote areas. Smoke has hung over Manaus, the Amazon's largest city, for weeks—visible evidence of the burning hundreds of miles away. On the ground, protected areas that should be off-limits have become targets. Cristalino II State Park in Mato Grosso was recently declared illegal by a state court, a decision that appeared to signal permission to those who wanted to clear it. Despite firefighters on the scene, nearly forty square kilometers—roughly fifteen square miles—burned in just weeks. According to analysis by the Center of Life Institute, a Brazilian nonprofit, about twenty percent of all area burned in the Amazon this year had been recently deforested, much of it within protected zones that land-grabbers have claimed.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019 and is now campaigning for reelection, has consistently minimized the crisis. When the Amazon fires shocked the world in 2019, he had promised development of the region and said environmental criminals should not face fines. Three years later, on August 22—the worst day for fire outbreaks in fifteen years—he told the media network Globo that criticism of Brazil's burning forests was an attack on the nation's agricultural sector. "Brazil does not deserve to be attacked in this way," he said. Under his tenure, forest loss has reached a fifteen-year high.

The carbon stakes are enormous. Nearly half of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions come from land conversion. The Amazon rainforest absorbs carbon for the planet, but burning timber releases that carbon into the atmosphere instead. At the COP26 climate summit earlier in 2022, the Bolsonaro government pledged to eliminate all illegal deforestation by 2028. The August fires suggest that commitment faces a widening gap between promise and practice. Alencar was direct about what would actually be required: "If Brazil wants to reduce its carbon emissions, the number one thing to do is reduce deforestation. And the second is to reduce the use of fire." Neither appears to be happening.