By Tainá Andrade*
The 17% cut in the budget for monitoring and preventing forest fires in 2026 is a warning sign, says the director of Science at IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), Ane Alencar.
The researcher argues that the policy for combating and preventing forest fires in Brazil should be a progressive agenda, of permanent construction. To this end, investments must be constant in order to avoid structural crises, especially in times of climate emergency.
“It may seem that if you have a hotter or drier year, you need more resources. But in reality, you need to keep the basics working so that prevention can take place. When a more critical year arrives, it’s important that this base is solid so as not to deal with a situation of disintegration, lack of resources or lack of community engagement,” explains Alencar.
Among the priorities, the director highlights the strengthening of community brigades, which act both in the orderly and responsible use of fire and in the rapid response to fire outbreaks. Equipping the infrastructure and strengthening communication, according to the director, are fundamental to keeping fire management actions running smoothly.
Extraordinary credit is not the solution
The budget forecast in the LOA (Annual Budget Law) for environmental monitoring and forest fire prevention in 2026 was R$495.8 million, R$101 million less than last year.
With the current scenario, the MPO (Ministry of Planning and Budget) reopened an extraordinary credit of R$53.6 million for the MMA (Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change).
The amount will be divided between R$40.4 million for IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) and R$13.1 million for ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation), both for fighting forest fires and deforestation.
“The extraordinary credit is an attempt to remedy the insufficiency of the budget that was planned. But that doesn’t impact on the cut that was actually made. What’s worrying is that fires are treated in the budget as an acute problem, rather than a chronic one,” explains Jarlene Gomes, a researcher at IPAM.
According to her, when money is allocated on an emergency basis, it is only used to fight fires, which leads to a failure in prevention. For this reason, the funds should be better planned, especially for prevention, which is essential in containing large fires.
The researchers point out that prevention and combat measures have a direct impact on environmental restoration policies, payments for environmental services such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the bioeconomy, forest management and even agribusiness productivity.
*IPAM Communications Analyst