Burning Dark

From the Arctic to the Amazon, fires are raging at an unprecedented scale, stoking an unfathomable fear: is the planet staring at an irreversible meltdown?

- Snigdha Das

THE FIRES RAGING in the world’s largest rainforest are just refusing to die down, and so are the controversies around it. Since January, more than 200,000 fires have been alight across the Amazon, famed for its biodiversity and dubbed the lungs of the planet. Hundreds of the blazes are now spreading to denser and pristine patches, hurting wildlife in their path and threatening some of the last forest refuges of indigenous tribes, many of whom remain uncontacted (see ‘We are protectors of Amazon’ on p40). Though the Amazon spans eight South American countries, blazes are most intense along its southern swath in Brazil that controls 60 percent of the rainforest.

To put out the fires, the government has deployed 44,000 troops and military aircraft in its six affected states. On August 29, it announced a 60-day ban on the use of fire for land clearing. But Brazil’s space research center, the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), detected 4,000 new forest fires over the next 48 hours. As charred and smoldering tree trunks pile up on the ground, a thick smoke mixed with soot and ash chokes the atmosphere and has triggered health emergency among communities. The states of Acre and Amazonas, which almost entirely remain covered by the tropical jungle, have declared a state of emergency. Analysts say the worst is yet to come. The number of fires will increase over the coming months as the dry season intensifies.