In Brazil, Agribusiness Drives Drought and Fires

After 150 days without rain — the worst drought in 44 years — brush fires swept through Brasília

In the last six weeks, over 130,000 man-made forest and brush fires have swept through large areas of Brazil's North, Midwest, and Southeast regions. These fires are traditionally started during the dry season by workers in the international agricultural commodities supply chain as a tactic to clear national park land for farming and ranching. This year’s fires are the worst in history, partly due to the most severe drought in decades. I was in Brasília over the weekend and produced this news story about the drought. As I was finishing the edit, a fire broke out in Brasília National Forest, the most important urban reserve of tropical savanna, or Cerrado, in the country. In the following 36 hours, fires swept through the city, displacing people from their homes and closing major roadways. Here is the news story, and below, I’ll post a transcript of the script.

Transcript

Narrator: During the last 6 weeks, man-made forest fires, caused by agribusiness actors clearing land for cattle pasture, have raged across Brazil. To make things worse, in many of the hardest hit areas it hasn't rained for months, facilitating the spread of the fires. In the national capitol of Brasilia, it hasn't rained in 150 days, representing its worst drought in 44 years.

Guilherme Eidt Almeida: Policy and Advocacy Coordinator of Instituto Sociedade, População e Natureza (ISPN/Society, Population and Nature Institute): There are regular droughts during this time of the year in Midwestern Brazil, but this year it is much worse than normal, not just here, but across the whole country, and this is connected to deepening climate change and changes in land use, which is mainly connected to an expansion of agribusiness. According to data from Mapabiomas, agribusiness is responsibly for 97% of the destruction of native vegetation in Brazil during the last five years.

Narrator: Brazil is one of the world's largest producers of two interrelated commodities that require huge amounts of water: Beef, and soy, which is mainly used to feed cattle. Production of both commodities is causing massive deforestation in the Amazon rain forest and in the Midwest, a region of tropical Savannah with unique flora and fauna which is rapidly dissapearing due to consumers in the US, China and Europe's taste for Brazilian beef.

Isabel Figueredo: Cerrado Program Coordinator of ISPN: This historic drought is the culmination of many years of the destruction of over half of the vegetation in this fantastic biome of the Cerrado. So, now we see that the start or rainy season takes place over 30 days later than it used to, the average temperature has risen by over 1.5 degrees Celsius in the region, and annual rainfall has dropped by 8%. We see that these are primarily the effects of the conversion of native vegetation by agribusiness

Narrator: On Sunday, September 15th, a huge forest fire started in Brasilia National Park, in the middle of the federal district.

Brian Mier, TeleSur, Brasilia