These stories about Amazon fires are misleading. I worry that’s bad for climate action.
What’s going on the Amazon?
It’s dry season, and Brazilian farmers are taking advantage of the conditions to clear land by burning forest. Most of the land they clear will be used to graze cattle.
This happens annually, but there has been a spate of media attention after the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported that the number of fires is about 85% higher this year than last. That sounds really bad, but what I’m going to emphasize here is that that statistic alone is really misleading.
For one, while there have been more fires this year than last, the total number is pretty much in line with the average over the past few years:
Furthermore, “number of fires” is a bad metric. What’s more relevant is the amount of forest that has been burned. For that, we need satellite data which is not yet available. As of August 16, though, NASA estimated that “total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years.”
Together, these data suggest to me that this year is not particularly bad for fire activity in the Amazon. It’s a far cry from an “international catastrophe.”
But aren’t we destroying the Amazon?
Still, while the fires may not be different than previous years, there are still fires, right? Doesn’t that mean we’re still destroying the Amazon?
In short, no. There’s no doubt that deforestation continues in the Amazon. Every year we lose some amount of area. But the last decade or so has actually seen remarkable progress on combating deforestation:
You can see that throughout the 1990s and 2000s, annual deforestation was consistently three to five times higher than it is now. And still, despite these high numbers, 82% of the Amazon’s original area is still covered by trees (source, p. 576). The Amazon is huge.
Of course I wish we had zero deforestation in the Amazon. It’s still terribly misleading to describe these fires as “the destruction of the Amazon.”
Why it’s important to be right about this
I did wonder if, by writing this post, I was making the world worse. Isn’t it just good enough that people are talking about environmental issues?
I don’t think it is because if we don’t correctly identify the problem, we won’t be able to pick the right solution.
Bolsonaro, under public pressure, has apparently mobilised the army to fight the fires. Leonardo di Caprio has already committed $5 million. Macron and the G7 are giving $22 million.
What is the benefit of those donations? I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s remarkable to me that that much money has been committed based on one data point.
If that money was donated to organisations like the Clean Air Task Force or the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, we could be reasonably confident that it would avert about 27 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
Instead, it will help fight fires in the Amazon. Fires which occur annually. Because we have misidentified the cause of the problem, we have lost a chance to make tangible progress against climate change. Moreover, we’ll find ourselves in the exact same situation next year.
Plus, climate change policies compete with each other. Once folks have seen money given to one cause, they see the job as partly done and are less likely to support further actions. We have to make sure we’re supporting impactful policies to avoid burning political capital. And the only way we can be impactful is if our actions are sustainable, effective, and evidence-based.
Tropical deforestation is a long emergency. It’s complex, with hidden drivers and long time lags between causes and effects. As hard as it is, we need to resist the urge to make decisions based on intuition and emotion.