The Amazon is on fire. FAKE NEWS!!!!

Leonardo Di Caprio on Instagram

I wasn’t originally intending to write about the fires raging in the Amazon rain-forest because the mainstream media has picked up on this, and it’s also clearly sparked the imagination of celebrities, politicians and the wider public too.

However…… I started to notice some people on Twitter denouncing the fires as “FAKE NEWS!!!”, and it immediately made me wonder why. Then a couple of days ago a friend sent me this article from Forbes suggesting that perhaps all is not as it seems, and so I had to investigate further. Here’s where I’ve got to…

First, let’s review the “FAKE NEWS!!!” argument head on. From what I can gather there are two main elements to this argument:

1. Images have been used that are either not of fires in the Amazon, or, are of very old fires in the Amazon. As this article by Mother Jones points out, using incorrect photos is mis-leading and sloppy, and inevitably detracts from the message the author was trying to convey.
2. Whilst there seems to be consensus that there have been over 40,000 fires so far this year in the Amazon, and that this is >80% up vs this time last year, the number of fires isn’t actually significantly up from levels in recent history as the chart below shows:

Source: Forbes

At this point I think it’s also worth acknowledging that there’s clearly lots of powerful domestic and international politics at play, and I suspect that for some this is also fuelling the calls of ‘FAKE NEWS!!!’. And finally, it’s important to understand that, somewhat counter intuitively, fire often plays a critical role in nature’s system of regeneration and renewal and so isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

So… false images, selective use of data, global politics and nature’s natural cycles have all contributed to the cries of FAKE NEWS!!!

What I think the FAKE NEWS proponents are missing however is as follows…

First, as the chart below shows, we still have the worst to come in terms of the anticipated volume of fires, as September is traditionally the most active month, with on average, 62% of the year’s fires still to come. Therefore we’re far from being able to make any definitively reassuring statements about the normalcy of what we’ve seen thus far:

Second, and much more importantly, whilst the number of fires in the Amazon this year might be close to the average of the past 10 or even 20 years, this should by no means give us any relief! In fact, quite the opposite. Because the benchmarks of the past 10 or 20 years have themselves seen peak fires, due to unprecedented levels of deforestation. According to this scientific paper, “Since the early 1970s, fire incidence has soared in the Amazon”. Therefore as far as I can see, the benchmarks being used by the FAKE NEWS!!! proponents are just as dubious, if not more so, than comparing 2019 fires to 2018.

The other reason why the FAKE NEWS!!! argument is moot, is because there are several *extremely* negative knock-on effects that all these man-made fires and high levels of deforestation are having (according to the WWF, 17% of the Amazon has been lost in the past 50 years ). Specifically:

1. We’re witnessing unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss, and so saying goodbye to millions of species that haven’t yet been discovered. This is because the Amazon is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet and currently home to 3 million species (1 in 10 of all known plants & animals). This biodiversity loss will negatively impact agriculture, forestry and medicine in ways we can’t yet imagine.
2. Destroying the Amazon has an extremely detrimental effect on the world’s delicate carbon balance. This is because via photosynthesis the Amazon’s trees convert carbon dioxide into the fuel they need to grow, thereby locking up carbon in their trunks and branches. Clearly they can’t do this when they’ve been cut down; and even worse, they emit all that carbon when they burn! Unfortunately however, research published in 2015 shows that the Amazon is now absorbing 1/3 less carbon than just 10 years previously, and in 2017 it was announced that due to human activity, rainforests are no longer able to act as carbon sinks. Therefore at a time when the world desperately needs billions more trees to absorb carbon and stabilise our precious climate, we’re busy destroying our largest rainforest. Not smart.
3. Finally, we’re getting dangerously close to breaking the Amazon’s hydrological cycle, whereby it generates half its own rainfall. If a critical amount of trees are felled, then the delicate Amazonian ecosystem will degrade to the point of being unable to support the rainforest, thereby pushing the ecosystem beyond its tipping point. Troubling signs that we’re getting close to this point include unprecedented severity of droughts in 2005, 2010 and 2016.

Source: Mongabay

So it seems clear to me that coverage of the Amazonian fires is not in fact FAKE NEWS!!!, but rather a reflection of the world waking up — arguably far too late — to the crisis that has been unfolding in the Amazon over the past 50 years. However as Greenpeace so brilliantly points out, whilst it’s been great to see some media coverage, this coverage has hardly been overwhelming, or proportionate:

Source : Greenpeace

Like me therefore, you might be wondering what on earth you can do about this? I’d suggest three simple things:

1. Vote with your wallet as this video encourages us all to do.
2. Try and consume less ‘stuff’ because ultimately all the ‘stuff’ in your home, comes from (and at the expense of) the natural world. This is most powerfully reflected in the fact that Earth Overshoot Day was on the 29th July this year. Gulp.
3. Stop wasting food! Approximately 40% of the world’s landmass is used to grow food. And yet 1/3 of all the food we produce gets thrown away, with half of all food waste taking place in the home. So you can directly do your bit to stop deforestation, fires and species extinction by simply stopping throwing away food, and perhaps using the OLIO app to share it with a neighbour instead!

UPDATE: The Brazilian President Bolsonaro has passed a 60 day ban on burning. This is clearly recognition of the gravity of the situation, and demonstrates the effect that international pressure can have.