In the skin of the Amazon rainforest, more than ever the prey of the flames

Two fire starts per minute, 8,700 starts in 3 days. This is what I’m being subjected to right now! I am the great forest, the Amazon forest. Finished the green ocean, here I am a huge red and black stain frozen by satellite images circulating on social networks… well, which does not circulate enough for my taste.

Sad image of me: an immense region the size of Spain in flames. It’s simple, I burn even more than in the summer of 2019 when, however, I had already broken records. Remember the pass of arms between Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, which has hurt me so much since he came to power. Emmanuel Macron then called on the G7 countries to come to my rescue. “Our house is burning”had he ignited on Twitter.

>> Deforestation, climate change… We explain to you why the Amazonian forest is always going up in smoke

Three years later, I continue to burn, more than ever, and this time in silence. Is it because you too are burning? Are you getting used to the flames? To charred forests? To the smell of smoke, to devastated landscapes? Do we get used to droughts? I, who host 10% of the world’s biodiversity, can’t get used to it. Every day, I see my 40,000 species of plants, 3,000 species of fish and more than 370 reptiles suffer and disappear a little more. On Wednesday September 7, indigenous leaders issued a report to sound the red alert. A quarter of my ecosystem would be irreversibly destroyed.

It will not be possible to go back and that is not good news. I know that you relied heavily on me to absorb your polluting emissions. I’m sorry to tell you, but you’ll have to find someone else… By dint of cutting, shaving, burning my trees to sell them and to make room for livestock or to grow soybeans, by dint of transforming myself into pastures, my soils are losing their fertility. We must therefore go elsewhere and shave, cut, burn more and more.

Still, it got better. I thought for a moment that they were going to leave me in peace. Between 2004 and 2012, we almost stopped deforesting me. Then the economic crisis and Jair Bolsonaro sounded the return of impunity for those who destroy me. Impunity, and even encouragement! Result: these last five years, I have been hurt even more than fifteen years ago.

Soon, I won’t be able to regenerate myself. From tropical forest, I am transforming myself into vast savannah, even if I still absorb 90 billion tons of CO2. 90 billion is twice the annual emissions worldwide. I let you imagine what it will be like in terms of global warming when I can no longer do it… So please rotate the images of this huge red and black stain. Challenge your president so that he ignites again to fly to my rescue. Do it for me but, above all, do it for you.


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