Brazil has declared a nationwide environmental emergency to prevent another devastating fire season in 2025. In 2024, record-breaking blazes scorched millions of hectares of native vegetation in the Amazon Rainforest and other biodiversity-rich biomes.
The measure, decreed by environment minister Marina Silva on Feb. 27, gives authorities extra powers and resources to nip wildfires in the bud before they spread uncontrollably.
Brazil’s federal government will hire an additional 250 federal firefighters and give six of the eight Amazonian states 45 million reais ($8 million) to bolster state-level fire brigades. The state of emergency is set to last until somewhere between August 2025 and April 2026, depending on the region.
“This is a coordinated government effort to assess risk before disaster strikes,” João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary at the environment ministry, said in a press conference. “The set of measures will help reduce the risk of wildfires across the country.”
Ane Alencar, science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brazil, told Mongabay that the move “lays the groundwork for early preventive action and highlights the need to organize brigades before the dry season begins. But for these efforts to be truly effective, state governments must also do their part.”
In 2024, the Brazilian Amazon burned at its fastest rate in more than a decade, with more than 278,000 fires recorded, fueled by a historic drought. In the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland in the west of Brazil, flames tore through 16% of the biome, impacting more than 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres).
Despite a surge in the number of fires, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined by 30% between 2023 and 2024, reaching a six-year low.
Now that El Niño, a phenomenon that causes drier conditions in the north of Brazil encompassing much of the Amazon, is no longer on course, 2025 is expected to be much less dry than the last two years. But there is still cause for concern.
Studies show that once the rainforest has burned, it becomes more susceptible to fire in the future.
“It isn’t a comfortable situation, as there are still vast regions under drought conditions,” said Rodrigo Agostinho, the president of the national environment agency, IBAMA.
Banner image: Wildfires in the south of Amazonas state, Brazil, in July 2024. Image © Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace.
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