Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil, both battling a wave of forest fires, were seeking on Monday to coordinate joint operations in their shared Amazon region to put out the fires, Bolivia’s defense minister said.
The meeting on the common border aims to assess “the magnitude and location of the fires and plan joint efforts to put them out,” said Minister Edmundo Novillo. In the case of Bolivia, the government is requesting support from Chile, Peru, France and China “to help us put out the fires,” he added.
Nearly two million hectares of grasslands, croplands and forests have been consumed by fire in the Bolivian province of Santa Cruz alone, the country’s agro-industrial powerhouse and home to 60% of the forest fires that began nearly two months ago near the border with Brazil, according to Bolivian authorities.
Although there were no fatalities, the flames burned livestock and wild animals and forced the evacuation of small communities and farms. A small plane and three helicopters are supporting the work of some 5,000 firefighters who have been mobilized since the start of the emergency. The fire that is of most concern is one that has been active for more than a month in the town of San Matías, on the border with Brazil.
Temperatures are rising with strong winds, which combined with the drought are causing the fire to spread more quickly, according to the National Weather Service. Authorities anticipate that September will be more critical and no rain is expected until late October.
Smoke pollution has also put several cities on emergency alert, reaching distant cities such as La Paz in the west, where air quality was average to poor on Monday, according to Gabriela Rivera of the city’s Environmental Service.
In Bolivia, peasants and farmers have been known to burn fallow land as a cheap way to renew pastures and make way for new farmland. These fires often get out of control. Four people have been sent to jail for setting fires and 51 lawsuits have been filed, Novillo said.
In Brazil, forest fires have put the state of Sao Paulo in a state of emergency, where the number of fires recorded last year has doubled, according to the authorities of that country. In South America, Brazil and Bolivia are the countries most affected by forest fires, according to monitoring by the organization Greenpeace.
Bolivia experienced its worst year in 2019 with 6.5 million hectares burned, according to the Friends for Nature Foundation (FAN). Greenpeace recorded 1,014 hot spots in Bolivian territory on Monday.
As fires increase, so does greenhouse gas emissions, leading to higher temperatures and the emergence of extreme weather events, according to Greenpeace.
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