Brazil prepares for third year of drought, wildfires in the Amazon

• Record drought fuelled wildfires in Brazil in 2024
• This year, abnormally dry conditions raise concern
• Government prepares to expand fire brigades

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil is bracing for the "high risk" that wildfires will ravage the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands in 2025 after the country faced a record drought last year, leaving many regions vulnerable and susceptible to renewed flames.

Even though much of Brazil is in the middle of the rainy season, most of the country faced drought at the beginning of the year, data from Brazil's National Water Agency showed. 

The government said it is preparing for the third consecutive year of drought in the Amazon and the second in the Pantanal, with measures ranging from boosting the number of firefighters it employs to encouraging prescribed burning as a fire prevention strategy.

"The data points to another critical year and has left us in a state of alert," said André Lima, Brazil's National Secretary for Deforestation Control, in a statement in March.

"Faced with this, the federal government is stepping up its action to mitigate the effects of the third consecutive year of drought in the Amazon and the second in Pantanal."

Among its firefighting and fire prevention plans, the government said it will boost the number of firefighters it employs by 25% to 4,608 this year and has secured more resources from the Amazon Fund, an international mechanism to direct aid to projects that halt and reverse deforestation.

The government also released in February an ordinance mapping out the priorities for the disbursement of federal funds for firefighting and fire prevention strategies around the country, two months earlier than in previous years.

Brazilian authorities and researchers said the rainfall this rainy season had so far not been enough to fully replenish the Amazon rainforest after two years of record drought.

"No one has been able to explain these heatwaves, these extreme temperatures from February and January ... they are escaping all (climate) models," said Liana Anderson, researcher at Brazil's National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN). "We will likely once again face a scenario with high risk of fires (in 2025)."

The area in Brazil devastated by wildfires rose by 79% in 2024 to 31 million hectares, according to mapping consortium MapBiomas Brasil.

Dry weather and degraded forests can be a dangerous combination, as once they are burnt they become more susceptible to catching fire again due to the abundance of dead trees and loss of shade.

"Now you have a lot of biomass that will keep getting drier in the next months," said Ane Alencar, director of science at IPAM, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute.

"When the dry season comes, fire will be able to spread."

Wetlands gone dry

Lima told a press conference in February that Brazil's government was even more worried about the weather conditions in the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetlands, which has been grappling with low rainfall for years.

Wildfires burned about 17% of the Pantanal in 2024, according to satellite data analysis from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, while MapBiomas data showed the area covered by water in the Pantanal was 61% smaller in 2024 than the historical average.

Jaime Verruck, the secretary of the environment for the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, told Context it is encouraging farmers to carry out prescribed burning this month and next ahead of the dry season to avoid bigger fires in future.

Prescribed burning refers to the practice of burning easily flammable vegetation - such as grass, fern and dead leaves - under controlled conditions to clear landscapes and avoid future fires spinning out of control.

Verruck also said the government of Mato Grosso do Sul, where most of the Pantanal is located, would take charge of the analysis and planning of prescribed burning and would no longer charge farmers for requesting authorization to carry them out.

In previous years, farmers had to pay a fee to request authorization from the government and had to hire experts to plan and implement the prescribed burning.

"Producers had been saying the (prescribed burning) process was too complex, and last year we had only three requests," said Verruck.

Strong opposition

Brazil's recent efforts come on the back of a series of measures last year aimed at building the country's firefighting capacity and fire prevention strategy.

Congress passed a law in 2024 giving states two years to come up with a firefighting plan, which encourages local governments and communities to build local fire brigades.

As part of efforts to curb illegal fires, the government also increased the number of firefighters last year, issued higher fines against perpetrators and made it illegal to produce on land that had been illegally burned.

Lima told Context the government measures had faced strong opposition and that Ibama and other environmental enforcement agencies lacked the manpower to enforce them across the massive Brazilian Amazon, a region larger than Western Europe.

"People (are) putting nails on roads so that fire brigades are unable to arrive at the (fire) site, firefighters (are) being driven away from firefighting areas under gunshots, or threat of gunshots," said Lima, adding that there were even people threatening to set fire to vegetation to get the government to back down.

"We won't solve everything with enforcers in the field."

Lima expected the build-up of local firefighting capacity to become a key part of Brazil's long-term fight against climate change.

(Reporting by Andre Cabette Fabio; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa.)