This archive report was first published on 23 August 2019.
On August 23, 2019, the world watched in horror as massive wildfires ravaged the Amazon rainforest, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and choking nearby cities with smoke.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was 'deeply concerned' by the fires, stating, "In the midst of the global climate crisis, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity."
French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Guterres' sentiments, calling the wildfires an 'international crisis' and urging the world's most industrialized nations to address it at their summit.
Official figures showed nearly 73,000 forest fires were recorded in Brazil in the first eight months of 2019, the highest number for any year since 2013. Most of these fires were in the Amazon.
Smoke from the fires had choked Sao Paulo and several other Brazilian cities in the past week, with Macron tweeting, "Our house is on fire. Literally. The Amazon, the lung of our planet which produces 20 percent of our oxygen is burning."
Peru, which contains much of the Amazon basin, announced it was 'on alert' for wildfires spreading from the rainforest in Brazil and Bolivia.
Paraguay and Bolivia were battling separate wildfires that had devastated large areas of their rainforests.
Environmental specialists attributed the fires to a rapid rate of deforestation in the Amazon region, which had quadrupled in July compared to the same month in 2018.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, however, attributed the fires to increased drought and accused environmental groups and NGOs of whipping up an 'environmental psychosis' to harm Brazil's economic interests.
