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At the beginning of August the Inpe had warned of an increment in fires at an alarming pace even when the government issued a decree in July prohibiting burnings in the national territory for 120 days.
The amount of Amazon fires in August was the second-highest for that month in the last ten years, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) reported on Tuesday.
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The Inpe recorded 29.307 fires, only 5 percent less compared to last year when the 30.900 burnings in the planet's largest rainforest sparked protests worldwide.
The figure surpasses the historical average of 26.000 fires. This amid growing pressure from environmental groups and the international community for President Jair Bolsonaro to fight deforestation.
According to Brazil's environmental group Climate Observatory, the figures demonstrate the failure in Bolsonaro's policies regarding the Amazon rainforest.
Exército foi enviado para a Amazônia em maio/2020. De lá prá cá, as queimadas na região permaneceram no mesmo patamar de 2019, e o desmatamento continua acelerado.
— Marcio Astrini (@MarcioAstrini) September 1, 2020
“O teatro militar montado para iludir os investidores não conseguiu enganar os satélites”https://t.co/Afocu20OO8
"The Army was sent to the Amazon in May / 2020. Since then, fires in the region have remained at the same level as 2019, and deforestation remains accelerated. "The military theater set up to deceive investors failed to deceive the satellites."
At the beginning of August, the Inpe had warned of an increment in fires at an alarming pace, even when the government issued a decree in July prohibiting burnings in the national territory for 120 days.
"The new data confirms the failure of the expensive and poorly planned Army operation Verde Brasil 2, unleashed in the Amazon by the Bolsonaro administration as a substitute for a plan to fight deforestation," the organization explained in a statement released today.
"The area of deforestation alerts in the Amazon in 2020 was 34 percent bigger than in 2019, even after three months of Army operation replacing Ibama, the federal environmental agency, which has been subordinated to the military," the Climate Observatory recalled.
While the numbers of fires rise, there is a particularly critical situation in Amazon's region of Pantanal. In July, the Inpe warned that during the first half of 2020, fires in Pantanal, the world's most extensive tropical wetlands reached the highest figures ever at 3.682 hot spots.
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