Wildfires in Brazil last year destroyed an area larger than Italy, a monitoring group reported Wednesday, highlighting ongoing challenges as farmers and ranchers illegally burn land to expand their territories.
In 2024, approximately 30.8 million hectares (119,000 square miles) of vegetation were burned, a 79% increase from 2023, according to data from the monitoring platform MapBiomas. Fires in the Amazon, a vital carbon sink and global biodiversity hotspot, accounted for 58% of the damage.
The alarming figures present a significant challenge for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government, which is set to host the UN COP30 climate conference in November in the Amazonian city of Belém. The 2024 wildfires represent the largest area burned since 2019.
Forest fires saw a dramatic rise, with 8.5 million hectares burned in 2024 compared to 2.2 million in 2023. For the first time, fires in the Amazon destroyed more forest than grassland, the report found.
“This is a worrying trend because once forests are burned, they become even more vulnerable to future fires,” said Ane Alencar of MapBiomas.
While climate change exacerbates dry conditions and increases fire risks, the primary driver in Brazil remains illegal land clearing by ranchers and farmers. The government has struggled to combat these practices effectively.
President Lula has prioritized protecting the Amazon, a shift from the lax environmental policies of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. However, in September, Lula acknowledged that Brazil was not “100% prepared” to tackle a wave of forest fires, which his administration attributed to “climate terrorism.”
The Brazilian Amazon experienced its worst wildfire season in 17 years in 2024, fueled by a prolonged drought. Satellite data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded 140,328 fires, a 42% jump from the 98,634 fires in 2023 and the most since 2007, when 186,463 fires were detected.
This surge in fires comes after a brief period of optimism earlier in the year when deforestation in the Amazon dropped by over 30% in the 12 months leading to August 2024. However, scientists warn that continued deforestation risks pushing the Amazon to a tipping point, where it will emit more carbon than it absorbs, further accelerating climate change.
