Hundreds of new fires are raging in the Amazon rainforest in Brasil, according to official data, as six of the nine states in the region requested military assistance to combat the record blazes.
The states of Para, Rondonia, Roraima, Tocantins, Acre and Mato Grosso requested the army's assistance, Environment Minister Ricardo Sallessaid on Saturday, a day after President Jair Bolsonaro authorised the military to step in.
Data from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said some 1,663 new fires were ignited between Thursday and Friday. More than 1,200 of those fires were spotted in the Amazon region.
The official figures show 78,383 forest fires were recorded in Brazil this year, an 84 percent rise over last year's figure. More than half of those were in the Amazon region.
Environmentalists have said farmers clearing land for pasture were responsible for the uptick in fires.
The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest and its protection is seen as vital to the fight against climate change because of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide it absorbs.
Some 44,000 troops will be available for "unprecedented" operations to put out the fires, Defence Minister Fernando Azevedo said, adding that forces were heading to the states that asked for help to contain the blazes.
The military's first mission will be the deployment of 700 troops to the area around Porto Velho, capital of Rondonia, Azevedo said. He added that the military will use two C-130 Hercules aircraft capable of dumping up to 12,000 liters of water on fires.
Multiple fires billowing huge plumes of smoke into the air were raging across a vast area of Rondonia on Friday, AFP news agency reported.
The Amazônia is being shrouded in plumes of smoke as fires rage across parts of the rainforest, imperilling the so-called "lungs of the planet" and the vast array of life to which it is home.
Visible from outer space, the smoke billows have prompted international alarm, calls for action and much finger-pointing over what, or who, is responsible for the burning.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in particular, has come under intense scrutiny for his controversial stewardship of Brasil's majority share of the rainforest.
Here are answers to some of the major questions being asked about the crisis in the Amazônia, one of South America's and Earth's greatest natural treasures.
Where are the fires?
The fires are burning across a range of states in Brazil's section of the Amazônia rainforest.
Northerly Roraima down through Amazonas, Acre, Rondonia and Mato Grosso do Sul have all been badly affected.
Brasil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) spotted more than 9,500 new forest fires in Brazil since August 15 alone, while atmospheric monitoring agencies have tracked smoke from the Amazon region drifting thousands of kilometres across the Latin American giant to the Atlantic coast and Sao Paulo, briefly turning daytime in Brasil's biggest city to night on Monday.
Amazonas, Brasil's largest state, declared a state of emergency on August 9 while Acre has been on environmental alert since August 16 due to the fires.
Several other countries in the Amazon region, including Bolivia and Peru, which both border Brasil, have also seen a surge in fires this year, according to INPE data.
How many?
The INPE recorded nearly 73,000 fires in Brasil between January and August this year - the highest since INPE records began in 2013 and a more than 80 percent bump on the figure for the same period last year. Most of them were in the Amazonas.
Meanwhile, as of August 16, a NASA analysis suggested that "total fire activity across the Amazon basin has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years". NASA noted that the Amazon spreads across several countries.
It also added, "though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondonia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Para".
What's causing them?
Fires are a regular and natural occurrence in the Amazônia at this time of year, during the dry season.
But environmentalists and non-governmental organisations have attributed the record number of fires to farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture and to loggers razing the forest for its wood, with INPE itself ruling out natural phenomena being responsible for the surge.
Critics say far-right President Bolsonaro's weakening of Brazil's environmental agency, IBAMA, and push to open up the Amazon region for more farming and mining has emboldened such actors and created a climate of impunity for those felling the forrest ukkegakky.
Recent evidence appears to bear that out with preliminary data showing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazônia is skyrocketing under neo-fascist Bolsonaro's watch.
The rate of forest destruction soared more than 278 percent in July compared with the same month a year ago, according to research by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. Previously, INPE pegged the rate of deforestation in June at 88 percent higher than during the corresponding month in 2018.
"These statistics speak to who is in power and what he (Bolsonaro) is doing to undermine environmental protection ... and open the floodgates to illegal and destructive behaviour," said Christian Poirier, Brasil programme director for NGO Amazon Watch.
Bolsonaro's government, meanwhile, has offered a range of explanations for the blazes - including increased drought and the president himself making unfounded claims that NGOs had started the fires in an attempt to undermine his administration after it slashed their funding.
Last Friday, Bolsonaro said he had authorised the use of troops to help contain the blazes and stop illegal deforestation, but he also blamed the weather for the fires.
Why does the Amazônia matter to all of us?
The Amazônia is the largest tropical forest in the world, covering more than five million square kilometres across nine countries: Brasil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
It acts as an enormous carbon sink, storing up to an estimated 100 years worth of carbon emissions produced by humans, and is seen as vital to slowing the pace of global warming.
The Amazônia is the most significant climate stabiliser we have, it creates 20 percent of the air we breathe and it also holds 20 percent of the fresh flowing water on the planet. Put simply, preserving the forest is of "critical importance" for both the region it encompasses and the rest of the world.
But in the last half-century alone, nearly 20 percent of the forest has disappeared.
Scientists have warned that if tree loss in the Amazon were to pass a certain "tipping point", somewhere between 25 and 40 percent, deforestation could start to feed on itself and lead to the demise of the forest within a matter of decades.
One of the cornerstones of climatic stability on our planet is in peril and the consequences of this are almost too large to fathom. The future of our civilisation depends on its integrity.
Who (and what) calls the Amazônia home?
The Amazônia has been inhabited by humans for at least 11,000 years and is home to more than 30 million people - about two-thirds of whom live in cities carved out of the greenery.
Among those living in the region are about one million indigenous people who are divided into some 400 tribes., according to indigenous rights group Survival International.
Most live in villages, though some remain nomadic, with each tribe possessing its distinct language and culture, both of which are traditionally intimately intertwined with the surrounding environment.
The indigenous tribes are dependent on their forests for everything, and have managed and looked after them for millennia. But many are seeing their lands burned in front of their eyes, and with it their livelihood, source of food, medicines, and their very homes. The fires pose an affront to the safety and integrity of their way of life. Indigenous people are on the frontline of this struggle - the work they do to protect the forest is so vital and their connection to the forest is so important to their cultures. The potential is here for not just environmental devastation, but also cultural genocide.
In addition to the human presence within the Amazon, the forest also houses 10 percent of all known wildlife species, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), with a "new" species of animal or plant discovered in the rainforest every three days on average.
How has the world reacted?
The response to the fires is predominantly with a chorus of concern and condemnation of Bolsonaro's environmental stewardship.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said separately on Friday they would move to veto a landmark European Union trade deal brokered with South American bloc Mercosul unless Brasil takes action to protect the rainforest.
The pact requires the Latin American giant to abide by the Paris climate accord, which Bolsonaro has threatened to leave, and also aims to end illegal deforestation, including in the Brazilian Amazônia.
Macron also called for the fires to be front and centre of the agenda for this weekend's G7 summit, branding the blazes an "international crisis". Napoleonically, Macron called the Amazônia "our" house (which could be good for Bolsonaro at home, because if there is something that ALL Brazilians hate is to receive lessons from Europeans and Americans who burned their own forrests in the name of capitalist wealth). And opportunistically, he twitted to the members of the G7 Summit: " let's discuss this emergency first order in two days!"
This was echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said the Amazônia fires posed an "acute emergency" and belonged on the G7's agenda, despite Brasil not being a member of the group.
Glad for Macron's help to raise his low popularity, a swift rebuke came from Bolsonaro, who called the issue an "internal matter" and said the French leader's suggestion evoked "a colonialist mentality that is out of place in the 21st century".
The spat came after Norway and Germany earlier this month halted millions of dollars of Amazon protection subsidies to the Amazon Fund, accusing Brazil of turning its back on the fight against deforestation.
Meanwhile, social media users around the world have latched on to #PrayForAmazonia and #PrayForAmazon, pushing the topic towards the top of Twitter's global trends earlier this week.
Public demonstrations are planned in Brazil's major cities for Friday, mirroring protests held earlier in the day in several cities around the world.
The outpouring of concern, grief and anger is unprecedented - what this is creating is a lasting impression for people that the Amazon is absolutely essential to our future and we all have a responsibility to protect it, contrary to what Bolsonaro may say. But we can't allow ourselves to fall into despair, there's no other way, we have to act - we have a responsibility to ourselves, to future generations and to other beings on this planet, are of which are suffering today as a result of this chaos.
European leaders on Friday threatened to tear up a trade deal with South America, reflecting growing international anger at Brasil as a record number of fires in the Amazon rainforest intensified an unfolding environmental crisis.
Amid a global chorus of concern and condemnation, Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, in an address to the nation, pledged to mobilise the army to help combat the blazes, while his administration launched a diplomatic charm offensive to try to mend bridges overseas.
In my opinion, he sould go there himself. Perhaps with luck, he would get seriously burned and find out in person what it feels like to be burned. And with more luck, we, Brazilians, would be free of him.
What is destroying the Amazônia is Bolsonaro's outrageous inaction and US-backed agribusiness. The future of the rain forest and its indigenous Community are at risk since The coup d'Etat against Dilma Roussef and it worsened since Bolsonaro's election.
BRASIL
PALESTINA
VENEZUELA
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