With 85 investigations launched to investigate an unprecedented scenario of forest fires in Brazil, the findings point to evidence of environmental crime. According to the Federal Police chief in charge of the proceedings, Humberto Freire de Barros, there are different hypotheses that may have motivated people from different parts of the country to start the fire that consumes wealth, health and the ability of human beings to exist in their place.
The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva. Photo: Tania Rêgo/Archive Agency Brazil
The Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, also sees a scenario of resistance to the resumption of a public environmental policy.
“We managed to resume the creation of conservation units, demarcation of indigenous land, combat mining, make a huge effort to reduce deforestation last year by 50%, this year we have already reduced it by 45% and we are now facing a situation, it is a combination of an extreme climate event that is devastating not only Brazil, but the planet, and criminals setting fire to the country.”
With less than ten days left until the end of September, Brazil has already recorded almost 200,000 fires since the beginning of the year. More than half of this total started in the Amazon.
Land grabbing
According to researcher Mauricio Torres, from the Amazon Institute of Family Farming (INEAF) at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), who studies territorial conflicts in the Amazon region, fire has historically been one of the stages in a broader process of appropriation of unallocated public lands. Although the use of this element has many other functions in the field, such as pest control in pasture areas or the elimination of solid waste, fire also serves to complete the deforestation process.
“A newly felled forest creates an immense volume of branches and trunks, and if you don’t set it on fire, you can’t do anything, not even enter the area. You can’t create pasture, you can’t do anything. So what do they do? They wait for it to dry, set it on fire and the soil is exposed.”
These deforestations are commonly intended to be used as land grabbing to appropriate public lands that have not yet been designated for a specific purpose, such as indigenous lands or conservation units, for example, explains Torres. According to the researcher, land appropriation is always thought of within the logic of the successive amnesties granted to invaders, such as those established by Laws 11.962/2009 and 13.465/2017. The first granted amnesty to invasions until 2004 and the second extended the benefit until 2008, in addition to determining other criteria such as area limits and type of occupation.
For Torres, deforestation occupies a prominent place in this land grabbing process. “According to the current ‘land regularization’ programs, one of the best documents to prove the time of occupation is an environmental infraction report for deforestation. It shows through an official document that he [o invasor] was there on the date of the infraction. If he was not ‘lucky’ enough to be fined, he needs to show a satellite image showing the deforestation carried out up until 2008″, he explains.
In satellite images, the researcher shows that deforestation has been spreading over more than 20 years, precisely in public areas that have not yet been designated, which is why it is necessary to think of measures to combat forest fires that go beyond controlling the fires. “It is not enough to have environmental monitoring, you have to take action on land. You have to stop rewarding deforestation with a land title. You have to combat land grabbing,” he says.
Crimes
Director of the Amazon Region of the Federal Police (PF), Humberto Freire de Barros. Photo: Jose Cruz/Agency Brazil
For the Federal Police delegate, human action in the use of fire at a time when its use was prohibited already indicates the existence of a crime, but it is still necessary to understand each case.
According to Barros, this crime can be negligent, when the person did not intend to cause the fire, or intentional when the ignition is intentional.
In the latter case, land grabbing is just one of the crimes related to environmental crimes that have been investigated, but there are others, such as gang formation, organized crime, money laundering, and corruption. “That is why our investigation often takes longer, so that we can correlate these other crimes and give the government the response that these criminals deserve,” he says.
Retaliation
Barros says that the simultaneous emergence of fire ignition points within a few minutes is also an indication of coordinated action that leads to other investigative hypotheses. “We recently carried out an action in southern Amazonas to repress illegal mining in the Madeira River and we destroyed more than 420 dredges. This generates dissatisfaction on the part of those who were committing the crime and we are working with the possibility of retaliation by these environmental criminals, in this new moment we are experiencing of resuming the environmental agenda.”
Other actions to remove indigenous lands and vacate conservation units also raise this hypothesis. Also in July, a publication in a local newspaper in the municipality of Novo Progresso, in southeastern Pará, included a statement by cattle ranchers dissatisfied with the evacuation of the Jamanxim National Forest, stating that they would be capable of encouraging fires in the conservation unit if they had to remove their herds from the federal public area.
Conservation units
A large fire hit the Brasília National Park last Sunday. Firefighters and locals tried to contain the flames Photo: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom/Agência Brasil
In recent months, the burning of conservation units has gone beyond the Amazon and affected national parks and forests in other biomes, such as the Cerrado, the second most affected by fire.
For researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute and coordinator of MapBiomas Fogo, Vera Arruda, in August of this year, the Cerrado savannas saw a 221% increase in the burned area compared to the previous year.
“These events result in the loss of biodiversity, with plant and animal species, often endemic, being impacted. The destruction of native vegetation also affects the biome’s ability to function as a regulator of the hydrological cycle, since the Cerrado is home to the springs of important river basins. In addition, fires can cause soil degradation, increase greenhouse gas emissions and compromise ecosystem services,” he explains.
Ecosystem damage
According to Chief Barros, in the police investigations initiated due to these forest fires, the costs of these ecosystem services will also be calculated so that those responsible for the environmental crimes will also be held liable for compensating these losses. “These ecosystem services that the affected area fails to provide are monetizable, financially measurable, and this has been included in our reports since July of last year, when the regulations were updated,” he concluded.
