Forest fires in Brazil last year 'devoured' an area larger than Italy

(Patria) - Forest fires in Brazil last year "devoured" a total area larger than the whole of Italy, announced the monitoring platform MapBiomas.

Brazil continues to struggle with fires that are often set by farmers and ranchers illegally expanding their territory.

Approximately 30.8 million hectares of vegetation were burned in Brazil in 2024, an increase of 79 percent compared to 2023, MapBiomas reported.

Fires in the Amazon, a key carbon sink for the rest of the world and the planet's most biodiverse region, caused 58 percent of the damage.

The figures are discouraging news for the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will host the UN COP30 climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belém in November.

Around 8.5 million hectares of forest burned in 2024, compared to 2.2 million in 2023, and in the Amazon, fires destroyed more forest than grassland for the first time, data shows.

"This is a terrible indicator, because once forests burn, they become more susceptible to future fires," says Ane Alencar from MapBiomas.

Due to climate change, vegetation becomes drier and therefore more susceptible to burning. But in Brazil, the main causes of fires are ranchers and farmers clearing land for pasture and agriculture – a crime the government is struggling to curb.

Lula has made preserving the Amazon a priority for his government, after weak protection against human encroachment under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

However, in September, Lula admitted that the country was not "100 percent ready" to face the wave of forest fires that his government attributed to "climate terrorism".

The Brazilian Amazon experienced the highest number of fires in 17 years in 2024, according to government data released earlier this month, after the vast biome suffered a prolonged drought lasting several months.

According to data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), satellite imagery throughout the year detected 140,328 fires.

This is 42 percent more than the 98,634 fires recorded in 2023 – and the highest since 2007, when 186,463 forest fires were recorded.

Scientists warn that continued deforestation will put the Amazon on a path to reach a tipping point where it emits more carbon than it absorbs, accelerating climate change.