2019 Amazon Rainforest Fire

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Part of a series on Brazil. [View Related Entries]

Overview

The 2019 Amazon Rainforest Fire is a forest fire that spread in August 2019 for over three weeks. Due to conflicting data, the fires in the Amazon were barely covered by the media until later in the month. Concerns were raised by the public as the Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and home to about three million species and one million indigenous people as well as providing the world with the largest carbon store.

Background

On August 13th, 2019, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration^[1] reported that fires in the Amazon rainforest can be seen by the NOAA-20 satellite. The event proceed years of warnings by various conservationist reporting increased fires during Brazil's dry season since 2004.^[2]^[3]

Notable Developments

During the week of August 15th, 2019, Twitter users began reporting on smoke seen in Brazil and expressed their concerns over fires in the Amazon region. Twitter user @danimadu^[5] shared a map showing the "extension of fires currently happening in the state of Rondônia in Brazil (which is under a thick smoke and where people have been dying), and in Bolivia, both in the Amazon region" (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 39 likes in three days. It is not uncommon for fires to be intentionally started by farmers in the region. This practice has been reportedly encouraged by Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro who had been recently criticized for ignoring the increasing amount of forest fires in the Amazon Rainforest.^[7] On August 19, Twitter user @BarrosThereza^[6] tweeted that "Brazil’s president is doing nothing to stop what is happening with the Amazon Rainforest" and included the trending hashtag #PrayforAmazonia (shown below, right). The tweet accumulated over 1,100 likes and 800 retweets in three days.

On August 21, The BBC^[8] reported that Inpe or Brazil's National Institute for Space research said that over 74,000 fires, which were mostly in the Amazon region, have been reported in a week. They also reported "the fires were a consequence of the increase in deforestation seen in recent figures" according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

That same day, Reuters^[4] quoted the Brazil's President as saying, "I used to be called Captain Chainsaw. Now I am Nero, setting the Amazon aflame" and then during a Facebook Live speech he blamed NGOs saying, "So, there could be…, I'm not affirming it, criminal action by these 'NGOers' to call attention against my person, against the government of Brazil. This is the war that we are facing."

Instagram Account Scams

On September 5th, 2019, HuffPost^[9] reported that multiple Instagram scam accounts that were "raising money for the Amazon" had appeared in the last few weeks with many donating or liking the Instagram posts to "plant a tree." They provided screenshots of several accounts that have since been deleted (shown below).