Anna Júlia Lopes*
IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) took part on Thursday (3) in the Meeting to Strengthen and Articulate Volunteer and Community Brigades, held in Brasilia. At the event, which was attended by brigade members working in the Legal Amazon, IPAM presented data on fires in the country from 1985 to 2024 – the latter year being considered a “point outside the curve”, as it was marked by a severe drought in the region.
According to the data presented by Jarlene Gomes, a researcher at the institute, around 21% of the Amazon area was burned at least once between 1985 and 2024. In addition, because of the drought period, 72% of Brazil’s burned area in the period occurred between August and October – a season that is approaching in 2025.
According to Gomes, who took part in the panel “Scenario of fires in Brazil and future prospects”, climate data shows that 2025 will be a dry year, but not as dry as 2024. “A huge area of native vegetation was burned in 2024. What happened was different because the area of forest burned much more than normal. The pattern that exists in the Amazon is the burning of the pasture area, but in 2024, the forest also burned,” he said.
For her, the key to preventing fires is prevention. Gomes added that natural outbreaks of fire in the Amazon’s native vegetation are not common, and that arson is the factor that will need attention from both the authorities and firefighters.
“It’s not enough for the brigades alone to be aware. We need the states, the municipalities, everyone in a chain. We need a pact so that these federations understand that the fire is not just a brigade war. It’s a war for everyone, for society,” he said.
Gomes also presented the “Fire Management in the Amazon” project, an IPAM initiative with three main lines of action to combat fires in the region:
- Intelligence: producing and integrating data on the risk of fires and identifying priority areas;
- Governance and Management: encouraging coordination between different levels of government and civil society to draw up protocols for fire prevention, response and control;
- Combat and Control: improving the direct response to fires by strengthening brigades and mapping volunteer and official brigades.
With the event, in line with the third axis of the initiative, IPAM began a partnership with Ipê (Ecological Research Institute) to map volunteer and community brigades in the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins and Maranhão. The project follows on from the survey carried out by Ipê, which has already mapped around 200 volunteer brigades aimed at preventing and fighting forest fires in Brazil.
In addition to Gomes, the event also featured talks by brigade members and representatives from the Ministry of the Environment and ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation). The last day was opened by federal deputy Célia Xakriabá (Psol-MG).
In her speech, the congresswoman celebrated the work of the brigade members and emphasized the importance of community brigades working together with the knowledge of the forest’s traditional peoples. “There will be no standing forest if we don’t consider who keeps it standing,” she said.
*IPAM journalist, anna.rodrigues@ipam.org.br