Brigid Bergin: I'm Brigid Bergin, and you're listening to The Takeaway. Last year, the fires in the Amazon made international headlines.

Female Speaker: Right now, the Amazon rainforest is being consumed by fire. In fact, there's an 80% increase in fires just over the last year alone. This comes, of course, after the hottest July our planet has ever seen.

Male Speaker: Firefighters no match for flames this ferocious and this intense. A fire igniting palm trees here on the Bolivian, Brazilian border fuelled by wind.

Brigid: This year has seen much less media attention, but the situation is even worse. There were 10,000 fires alone during the first 10 days of August in Brazil, a 17% rise from the same time last year, making it the worst beginning of a fire season in the Amazon in a decade. We're joined by Mauricio Savarese, a reporter for The Associated Press who's in the city of Novo Progresso in the Amazon. Mauricio, welcome to The takeaway.

Mauricio Savarese: Hi, Brigid. Thank you for having me.

Brigid: Mauricio, why are this year's fires worse than last year?

Mauricio: Well, there was less media attention in the beginning of the fire season and there was an accumulation from previous months, June and July, that was already affecting this area. I have to say that the trend, at least, according to people here in Novo Progresso is that the fires, at least, in September, from then onwards, are not going to be as intense for the sheer fact there's less to burn because when you have a very big year of fires to the region, the following year has a little less, if you have a broader comparison, just because there's not enough time for some of the vegetation to grow again. That means next year could actually be much harsher than this year even.

We're still taking a look into the areas around Novo Progresso, which was one of the most affected last year. We have seen some fire already, but it seems that they're holding a little, at least for a few days, despite the fact that we do see fog. We do smell a lot of smoke as well. I'm in a hotel, which is the border of a very strange area of the city and we can definitely smell a lot of the smoke in our rooms, even. It's not as intense for now, but it's very clear that they're set to do more in the next few weeks.

Brigid: Mauricio, what role does Brazil's President, Jair Bolsonaro play in this? To what extent are politics interfering with policies to prevent fires?

Mauricio: President Jair Bolsonaro was highly voted in this area of Novo Progresso when he was elected president in 2018. He had 80% of the vote in the runoff. That shows how farmers, ranchers, cattle raisers, and people that depend on those jobs to survive, agree with him in the idea that the Amazon needs to get more economic development than it has. Yesterday, we were roaming around a very isolated region of the city of Novo Progresso just to look for fires, and talking to residents, they don't want their houses to burn, but they also want jobs. They were saying a few years ago, Brazil's environmental agency would send their agents here, they would come with police, some of them were having machine weapons, and that would scare a lot of farmers that would not continue doing what they're doing.

Now, they are not authorized to do as much, and although it doesn't preserve the Amazon as much as expected, but it brings them jobs. During a pandemic, when jobs are not really Brazil's best asset at the moment, any possibility of income has become even more important. It looks like Novo Progresso, which is a very new city, it's about 20 years old, that people want to get that kind of economic development to support President Bolsonaro in his intent to allow farmers, ranchers, and cattle raisers, soybean growers to do whatever it takes to bring money to this community.

Brigid: Of course, juxtapose from the economic development argument, there is the role that the Amazon plays in terms of climate change. Can you talk about how important that is?

Mauricio: A lot of our reporting is based on the fact that the Amazon is really at a tipping point in which it could be either saved or become a savanna in the next few decades after a long process of decay. Novo Progresso is one of those cities that were started recently, and that show how much desperate need for development some part of Brazil has. Because there's little policies that would actually allow them to do that in a very environmentally aware way, they just do the best they can, and the best they can sometimes often hurts nature. There's a very big reserve here called the Jamanxim area, which is a bit forest, and if you looked at the degradation there from 2006 to now, it looks like cancer is taking over because miners, of course, illegal miners, loggers, they are basically entering and then taking whatever they can from their lands and from those lands. There's very little police enforcement that is interested in stopping that. Of course, that has accelerated over the last few years, but it isn't only under President Bolsonaro that these things have happened. We're not talking about a new trend, it's been going for a few years even during left-leaning administrations Workers' Party, during a centrist administration of President Michel Temer. It isn't as if Bolsonaro had come with a totally new idea and emboldened those people to speed up deforestation. This has been going for a long time and protection of the forest seems less urgent to a lot of these people than their survival economically.

Brigid: Of course, the crisis in the Amazon is compounded by the context of a pandemic, and Brazil is another global epicenter with more than 100,000 deaths. How does that connect to the handling of the fires?

Mauricio: It seems that no one here in Novo Progresso actually cares about the pandemic. I'm wearing masks, I'm using sanitizers everywhere, people look at me as if I have the virus. They are taking a very loose approach towards the pandemic. The pandemic for them, of course, it killed people and it made some people sick, about 13 people in this city, at least according to official figures, died of COVID-19, but for them, it's basically a matter that is an economic problem for them there. That's also why they're also even more supportive of Bolsonaro's approach to the pandemic, allow them to have a narrative that this is only a little flu, some people that die are actually too old or too weak, and the others would die anyway.

Novo Progresso doesn't really care much about the health care aspect of the pandemic, they're more interested in the economic downfall they're experiencing as well. There's not really any big limitations to mining, or to logging, or to the fires just because of the pandemic. I would say that the only thing that makes it worse is that you have to breathe this heavy air filled with smoke, and I'm sure that there's going to be even more people feeling sick because of this. It's a different approach if you compare it to Brazil's biggest cities for sure.

Brigid: Mauricio Savarese is a reporter for the AP. Mauricio, stay safe. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Mauricio: Thanks for having me.

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