Wildfires in Brazil Burn Area Larger than Italy, Worsening Amazon’s Climate Crisis
Wildfires in Brazil ravaged an area larger than all of Italy in 2024, with a total of 30.8 million hectares (119,000 square miles) of vegetation destroyed, according to a report released on Wednesday by the monitoring platform MapBiomas. This marks a staggering 79 percent increase in burned land compared to the previous year.
The Amazon, which plays a critical role as a carbon sink and is home to unparalleled biodiversity, bore the brunt of the destruction, accounting for 58 percent of the total damage. This devastating surge in wildfires is a major setback for the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is preparing to host the UN COP30 climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belém in November.
The 2024 figures represent the largest area burned since 2019, with 8.5 million hectares of forest lost, compared to just 2.2 million in 2023. This year, fires in the Amazon consumed more forest than grassland for the first time. “This is a terrible indicator, because once forests are burned, they become more susceptible to future fires,” said Ane Alencar of MapBiomas.
While climate change has contributed to drier conditions, making vegetation more vulnerable to fires, the primary cause of these fires in Brazil remains illegal land clearing by farmers and ranchers expanding their agricultural and grazing operations. This practice continues to be a significant challenge for the Brazilian government, despite efforts to combat it.
President Lula has made protecting the Amazon a key priority of his administration, especially after the weakened protections under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. However, in September, Lula admitted that the country was not “100% prepared” to face the fire crisis, which his government has attributed to “climate terrorism.”
The Brazilian Amazon saw its highest number of fires in 17 years in 2024, with satellite imaging detecting 140,328 fires, a 42 percent increase from 2023. This was the largest number of fires since 2007, when 186,463 fires were recorded. Despite some positive news last year, with deforestation in the region dropping by more than 30 percent in the 12-month period ending in August 2024, these new figures signal a worrying escalation in the fight to preserve the Amazon.
Experts continue to warn that persistent deforestation and fires will push the Amazon closer to a tipping point where it could shift from a carbon sink to a net emitter, amplifying global climate change.
