In the summer of 2019, flames engulfed the Amazon. 87,000 fires scorched the world’s largest rainforest, home to 30 million people, 40,000 plant types, and more than 430 species of mammal. Images of the fires blazing across large swaths of the Amazon generated outrage worldwide. The costs of losing this precious ecosystem, after all, are profound. Often referred to as the lungs of the planet, the Amazon produces 20% of Earth’s oxygen and sucks in atmospheric carbon dioxide. As natural disaster researcher Jose Marengo remarked: If the Amazon were to collapse, it “would mean bye-bye Paris,” a reference to the Paris Accord’s stated goal to limit warming to 1.5° degrees. Marengo’s warning raises key questions: Why is the Amazon on fire? What actions have been taken to combat this disaster? And what is at stake in this crisis?

The Amazon Jungle in Apui, Amazonas goes up in flames (Source: Aljazeera).

Human factors drove the Amazonian inferno last year. Experts contend that deforestation for cattle ranching, soy cultivation, and mining made for an explosive ecosystem. Forest fires also exacerbate and are intensified by the human-driven climate crisis. Longer dry seasons and higher temperatures are catapulting the “savannization” of the Amazon, a process where forests transform into savanna-like landscapes, often due to fire occurrences in the ecosystem. Savannization triggers a vicious cycle of further forest cover loss and higher intensity flames. At present, the Amazon is a major carbon sink, absorbing nearly a billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. But with rampant deforestation and raging fires, the rainforest is in danger of morphing into a carbon source, one that spews out large quantities of carbon emissions.

The forest fires mean injustices too. Hundreds of Indigenous communities live in the Brazilian Amazon. Large-scale fires threaten to displace Indigenous people and rupture intimate ties between local tribes and the surrounding land. Indigenous groups continue to fight an uphill battle to save the “soul” of the rainforest.

There was a time when Brazil dramatically curbed deforestation in the Amazon Basin. Between 2004 and 2012, deforestation rates plummeted from 27,772 to 4,571 square kilometers per year. Concerted public pressure and an effective government crackdown slowed illegal land clearing. In 2015, however, the Amazon saw a spike in cattle ranching, and deforestation began to accelerate.

Brazil’s recent political turnabout has escalated this crisis. Cattle ranchers with stakes in the beef and soy industries hold enormous lobbying power, which they use to challenge environmental regulations. To add fuel to fire, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro frequently stokes the flames of anti-environmentalism. The president’s woeful environmental record has drawn sharp criticism from the international community. Bolsonaro has fired back, decrying the “lamentable colonialist stance” of the developed world. In light of his nationalistic posturing and wildly controversial claims on the Amazon, activists have christened Bolsonaro the “exterminator of the future.”

For my beat, I will examine the fiery power dynamics shaping the future of the Amazon. I aim to engage with perspectives at the local, national, and global levels. In doing so, I hope to examine the driving factors and consequences of the forest fires, as well as proposed solutions to tackling the disaster. The Amazon rainforest is deemed the heritage of humanity. An effective—and equitable—way out of this crisis is vital. Indeed, the lungs of our planet depend on it.