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Volunteers extinguished a fire in Aguas Calientes near Robore, Bolivia, on Aug. 24. Farmers commonly set fires in this season to clear land for crops or livestock, but temperatures and winds can quickly whip flames out of control, and most communities lack firefighting equipment.
Volunteers extinguished a fire in Aguas Calientes near Robore, Bolivia, on Aug. 24. Farmers commonly set fires in this season to clear land for crops or livestock, but temperatures and winds can quickly whip flames out of control, and most communities lack firefighting equipment.
Photo Credit: Juan Karita | Associated Press

Wildfires point to urgency of upcoming Amazon synod

Bishop of the Pando in Bolivia called this fire season the worst people can remember

Wildfires raging in Bolivia and Brazil underscore the urgency of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon that Pope Francis has called for October, said Bishop Eugenio Coter of the apostolic vicariate of Pando in northern Bolivia.

Fires in the Bolivian Amazon have burned an area about the size of Connecticut and left at least 50 families homeless.

By bringing together Church leaders, indigenous people and lay leaders to discuss issues that are important for the Catholic Church in the nine-country Amazon region, “the pope is making a prophetic gesture,” Bishop Coter told Catholic News Service.

The devastation from the fires “shows that the pope is right — this is an emergency for humanity and for the Church,” he said.

Describing the Amazon rainforest as “vital for our planet,” Pope Francis joined the region’s bishops in praying for action. “We are all worried about the vast fires that have developed in the Amazon,” the pope said Aug. 25 after leading the recitation of the Angelus prayer. “Let us pray that with the commitment of all they will be brought under control quickly. That forest lung is vital for our planet.”

Farmers in the Amazon basin often set fire to fields and pastures at this time of year to prepare land for planting. Hot temperatures and winds can quickly whip flames out of control, and most communities lack firefighting equipment.

This year’s fire season is the worst that people can remember, Bishop Coter said. There has been an increase in fires in recent weeks, especially in the lowlands near Bolivia’s eastern border with Brazil, in an area known as the Chiquitania.

The devastation is partly because of government policies that encourage farmers to clear more forest for cattle ranching, the bishop said.

In April, the Bolivian and Chinese governments signed an agreement that will allow Bolivia to export beef to China.

The Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade, which includes various trade associations, among them livestock and timber groups, expects beef exports to total 20 million tons by the end of the year. The goal is to double that amount by the end of 2020, which will mean nearly doubling the number of cattle in the country.

A law passed in 2015 allowed small farmers and communities to cut down forests and clear up to 50 acres for farming and ranching. In early July, the government issued a decree that expanded permission to use fire to clear forest for crops and pasture.

A sharp increase in wildfires followed in the Chiquitania region, Bishop Coter said.

The government also has encouraged small farmers to move from the Andean highlands to new settlements in the Amazonian lowlands, he said.

In some cases, that has led to conflicts with local residents. In the town of Robore, 250 miles east of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, demonstrators burned the local police station during a protest in November 2018 after migrants were allowed to settle in protected areas. Fires are burning in at least one of those areas.

People who are new to farming in the Amazonian lowlands often do not take adequate steps to keep fires from spreading out of control, said Alberto Caballero Mendoza, 53, who teaches at a Catholic high school in Robore.

Smoke from wildfires in that area is irritating residents’ eyes and aggravating cases of asthma, he said. The smoke was so thick in the nearby community of San Lorenzo Nuevo that residents took refuge in Robore.

In Brazil, fires also are burning in areas where industrial-scale farms and cattle ranches are expanding into the forest, especially along the southern and western edge of the Amazon.

Ironically, Bishop Coter said, both Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who leads a rightist government, and Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales, are implementing the same kinds of agricultural policies.

“The two countries most affected (by fires) have governments at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but their position on deforesting the Amazon is the same,” he said. “There is no political or economic plan for the Amazon that does not depend on the extraction of natural resources.”

Bishop Coter and other Bolivia Church leaders are meeting in Cochabamba with delegates from the country’s Amazonian Church jurisdictions to prepare for the synod, set for Oct. 6-27 in Rome.

The delegates raised various issues that they would like the bishops to discuss during that meeting, including migration from the Andean highlands to the Amazon region, the expansion of farming and ranching, and helping young people maintain Christian values.

One very specific suggestion from delegates from the Chiquitania, he said, was assistance in obtaining tractors or other equipment to help farmers prepare their fields so they would not have to use fire.

Bishop Coter said he hopes the synod will encourage people to pressure their governments for policies that will protect the Amazon forest and the livelihoods of the people living there.

The current emergency in the region “shows clearly that we are all interconnected,” he said, “and this affects the entire world.”


RIO DE JANEIRO — Fires across the Brazilian Amazon have sparked an international outcry for preservation of the world’s largest rainforest. Here’s a look at the role the Amazon plays in regulating the world’s climate.


IS THE WORLD’S OXYGEN SUPPLY AT RISK?

No. While it’s commonly said that the Amazon produces 20% of the world’s oxygen, climate scientists say that figure is wrong and the oxygen supply is not directly at risk in any case. That’s because forests absorb roughly the same amount of oxygen they produce. Plants do produce oxygen through photosynthesis, but they also absorb it to grow, as do animals and microbes.

That doesn’t mean the fires aren’t a problem for the planet. The Amazon is a critical absorber of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, like oil and coal.

IS THE AMAZON ‘THE LUNGS OF THE PLANET?’

The Amazon rainforest is frequently referred to as the “lungs of the planet,” but it may not be the most accurate analogy for the forest’s role.

Carlos Nobre, a University of Sao Paulo climate scientist, says a better way to picture the Amazon’s role is as a sink, draining heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Currently, the world is emitting around 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. The Amazon absorbs 2 billion tons of CO2 per year (or 5% of annual emissions), making it a vital part of preventing climate change.

WHAT DO THE FIRES IN THE AMAZON MEAN FOR THE WORLD’S CLIMATE?

Fires in the Amazon not only mean the carbon-absorbing forest is disappearing, but the flames themselves are emitting millions of tons of carbon every day. Nobre says we’re close to a “tipping point” that would turn the thick jungle into a tropical savannah.

The rainforest recycles its own water to produce a portion of the region’s rain, so deforestation makes rains less frequent, extending the dry season. Nobre estimates that if 20% to 25% of the forest is destroyed, the dry season will expand enough that it will no longer be a forest, but a savannah.

WHAT IS CAUSING THE FIRES?

The current fires in the Amazon are manmade and are mostly set illegally by landgrabbers who are clearing the forest for cattle ranching and crops.

—Anna Jean Kaiser, Associated Press

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