A sad record. January 2022 has been the hottest month for the Colombian Amazon in the past decade, with an increase in wildfires in this region of southeastern Colombia. These will most likely have an impact on air quality as far as the capital Bogota.
According to a report by the Ministry of the Environment, the month of January recorded the “highest value of hot spots in the last ten years” in the Colombian Amazon. The phenomenon occurs, adds the ministry, when the country goes through a low rainfall season. It is due to “anthropic activities”, that is to say human activities, of which “the most important is associated with deforestation fronts”, adds the report.
At least 80% of these “hot spots” are forest fires, a ministry spokesman told AFP. At the end of January, the ministry identified more than 3,300 “hot spots” in the six departments that make up the Colombian Amazon, including 1,300 in the Guaviare region alone.
Deforestation in question
According to testimonies in October in this region, peasants and landowners take advantage of the dry season, from January to April, to burn the cut trees, plant coca plants in their place or let the cattle graze there.
The Serrania del Chiribiquete National Park, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is particularly threatened, as is the Nukak National Nature Reserve, a vast territory of jungle inhabited by these last nomadic natives of Colombia.
The Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), which keeps its own count and regularly flies over the areas concerned, recorded at least 938 forest fires, the highest figure for a month of January since 2012.
Videos shared on social networks by this NGO, which specializes in monitoring deforestation, show thick clouds of smoke and flames rising from the jungle of Guaviare.
Monitors from the FCDS advise that the fires that occur in the Amazon will impact the quality of the Bogotá area in the near future. @danielbernalb@RodrigoboteroG
See all the information aqui https://t.co/lzmYKtSimr pic.twitter.com/5vbiw6aKeE
— FCDS (@FcdsOrg) February 3, 2022
According to the Global Forest Watch planetary fire monitoring system, 2,363 fire alerts have been reported in the Colombian Amazon as of February 4, since the beginning of January.
Clouds over Bogota
According to the FCDS, a layer of white-gray clouds observed recently in the sky of Bogota is the consequence of these fires, and the phenomenon should intensify in the coming hours.
“Thousands of hectares of Amazon jungle, cut down in recent months, are on fire today. These massive fires are now being felt as far away as Bogota,” FCDS director Rodrigo Botero warned on Twitter.
For her part, the mayor of Bogota Claudia Lopez castigated on the same social network the “inability” of the government “to control the territory and guarantee security, which still affects us in Bogota. When it is not massacres and forced displacements, it is arson (…) which, due to the direction of the wind, ends up arriving and deteriorating the quality of the air “in the capital, in almost 500 km away.
In Medellin, the second most populous city in the country, the town hall has warned of a deterioration in air quality to a level “harmful to the health” of children and the elderly.
According to data from the Colombian government, deforestation has exploded in recent years in the Amazonian part of the country, notably as a result of the historic peace agreement signed in 2016 with the Marxist guerrillas of the FARC, which then abandoned large swaths of territory under his control. Other armed groups have since taken control, also taking advantage of the absence and inaction of the state in these isolated areas. The purpose of deforestation is for extensive cattle ranching, illegal mining of minerals, and the cultivation of coca for the production of drugs.