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Brazil Fires

Christina Hua

Burning lands is a tactic often used by farmers to clear the land, get rich nutrients in the soil, and re-start their planting. Though risky, most of the time it pays off, leaving farmers with good land to work with. Sadly, this is not the case for the Amazon rainforest. Since we are currently in the Amazon’s dry season, the fires spread faster than ever, causing up to four thousand outbreaks of fire. 

The Amazon rainforest is a valuable ecosystem, providing us with medicinal plants that fight against tropical diseases, gold, silver, copper, tin, and zinc, coffee, chocolate, rice, potatoes, tomatoes, black pepper, bananas, pineapples, and corn. Not only does the Amazon provide us with these resources, it also makes up twenty percent of the world’s fresh water supply and twenty percent of all of the world’s oxygen. 

On the thirty-first of August, the government banned burning lands in order to prevent the spread of more fires. Unfortunately more the Amazon, the ban of burning did almost nothing, as two thousand more fire outbreaks happened in the Amazon region within the next forty-eight hours. Not only were there more fires in the Amazon region, almost two thousand more fires appeared near the Amazon in neighboring regions. 

Though the government has banned burning new lands, most people see it as a political stance rather than a useful one. Many see it as too late to do anything big anymore, and the ban on burning hasn’t done anything to prevent more fires, as shown by the numbers above. Weather experts have already stated that rain won’t be able to put out the fire for weeks. For now, there isn’t much anyone can do to save the Amazon from burning down.  

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