A record-breaking number of wildfires are blanketing the Amazon with smoke, choking some Brazilian cities and further isolating many Indigenous villages. Over 2,700 wildfires have been reported in the region in the first 11 days of the month — the highest number for any October since 1998, when the record-keeping began.
Air quality became so poor last week in places like Manaus that officials had to postpone the city’s annual marathon, and major universities canceled classes. Philip Fearnside, research professor at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia, said hospitals in the city are full of people who are having respiratory issues. “That should be a wake up call to actually change government policies and individual behavior to actually contain global warming,” he said.
Part of the issue is that the Amazon is in the middle of a severe drought. Water levels in the region’s major rivers have become so low as to be unnavigable, leaving many Indigenous river communities without any way to obtain certain foods, drinking water, or medicine, according to Reuters. Commercial shipping has also been impacted as vessels from the Denmark headquartered company Maersk suspended service in Manaus, after a barge ran aground on the Rio Negro river last month.
“It’s a very worrisome situation,” said Marcia Macedo, an associate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “We’ve seen large fish kills [an event in which numerous dead fish are suddenly observed in a body of water], water levels dropping way faster than normal — lake levels, river levels, like 6 meters below what would be expected at this time of year. And definitely the potential for it to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.”
On Wednesday, Indigenous tribes in the region called for the Brazilian government to take more formal action. “We ask the government to declare a climate emergency to urgently address the vulnerability Indigenous peoples are exposed to,” read a statement from the Indigenous umbrella group APIAM, which represents over 60 Amazonian tribes.
As of Friday, almost all of the 62 cities in the state of Amazonas, which includes Manaus, had declared a state of emergency.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva campaigned on protecting the Amazon from deforestation and further destruction, in sharp contrast to his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. But while Lula’s administration has upheld Indigenous rights by restoring land in the rainforest and the Brazilian Supreme Court struck down a challenge to Indigenous land rights last month, deforestation remains a major concern.
Tree loss is not the only factor contributing to the current crisis. Climate change as well as El Niño, a weather phenomenon which results in a mass of warm water traveling east over the Pacific and crashing into South America, are also driving dry conditions. “Deforestation contributes to global warming, although fossil fuels globally are the main cause,” said Fearnside. “But global warming is changing climate all over the world, including here in the Amazon.”
Macedo warns that if the cycles that maintain the Amazon rainforests trademark wet, rainy, cloudy conditions start to dissipate, the forest could be permanently altered
“If you get beyond a certain amount of deforestation, you start to affect that recycling of rainwater back to the atmosphere that helps to kind of cool the land surface and also seed new rain clouds,” she told Grist. “If fires get out of control, then you have less forest cover and these droughts are even more intense and so on and so forth.”
While the system is fairly well understood, Macedo says it’s difficult to pin down at what point things will stop working as usual.
“It’s not linear. It’s not it’s not a simple process to kind of pin down,” said Macedo.
This article originally appeared in Grist.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy