Last year, the planet watched in horror as the Amazon rainforest went up in flames. Now, with the world distracted by COVID-19, there are plans to burn the Amazon again -- and this year's fires are slated to be even worse.

Only rapid international pressure on Brazil’s government can protect what remains of the Amazon before the forest, and our future, goes up in flames.

Since last year’s devastating fires, destruction of the Amazon rainforest has soared to the highest rates in recent history, even though tropical deforestation risks creating even more deadly pandemics. President Jair Bolsanaro, who has called himself "Captain Chainsaw," has gutted Brazil’s environmental enforcement agencies, and his new environment minister was recently recorded encouraging the government to “run the cattle herd through the Amazon” while the world is distracted by COVID-19.

With global attention elsewhere, the Bolsonaro administration is hoping to quietly pass legislation which would “plunge a dagger into the lungs of the world" by granting criminals legal ownership of illegally razed rainforest. Massive international pressure has managed to delay a vote on this bill twice, but illegal loggers and landgrabbers, anticipating a major profit, are racing to turn the Amazon to ashes. 

In March 2020 alone, the Imazon Research Institute registered a 279% increase in deforestation reports compared to the same month last year. With the Brazilian government turning a blind eye to the destruction, as many as 4,500 square kilometers (1,740 square miles) of rainforest has already been illegally razed this year.

Soon, criminals will return to clear the land by burning the trees cut earlier this year. And with the Amazon currently undergoing a historic drought, conditions are perfect for fires to quickly blaze out of control in 2020, destroying thousands of square kilometers of precious rainforest, untold biodiversity, and the planet's best hope against climate change.

Public health experts fear that if the Amazon is allowed to burn again in 2020, a deadly cloud of smoke could cover the entire South American continent, risking an explosion of respiratory cases and complications during a time when much of South America’s health system is already in collapse due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even worse, ecologists are warning that the Amazon rainforest is already on the brink of an irreversible tipping point beyond which the entire ecosystem could rapidly collapse, with dire consequences for all life on Earth. 

If deforestation is not stopped soon, the lungs of our planet could soon lose their ability to function, and the entire rainforest will dry out and become a massive "carbon bomb," supercharging climate change and eliminating all hope of keeping global temperatures to a manageable level. 

This year’s planned fires could push the Amazon over the edge. 

But they don’t have to happen.

Brazil's government already knows how to protect the rainforest: between 2004 and 2012, the nation was able to curb deforestation by more than 80% while almost eliminating industrial-scale land-clearing. Preserving the Amazon is also in the economic interest of Brazil -- a recent study found that keeping the forest intact would preserve $8.2 billion of annual revenue for Brazil's economy, while destroying it would “reduce rainfall so significantly that it would generate a $422 million annual loss to agriculture."  And the Bolsonaro administration has shown that it will bow to international pressure to protect the Amazon, with Vice President Hamilton Mourao stating that “we don’t want to be labeled by the rest of the world as an environmental villain.” 

Bolsonaro's cabinet may think that nobody is watching as they allow the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest, but they are wrong. The Amazon is a global good and must not be allowed to burn again. 

As global citizens, we demand that Brazil's government immediately take meaningful and lasting measures to protect the Amazon before it erupts in flames. These measures should include:

• Strict enforcement and prosecution of illegal landgrabbing and deforestation;
• The permanent withdrawal of Bill PL-2633/2020;
• Full restoration of staffing and funding to environmental enforcement agencies including FUNAI, IBAMA, and ICMBio;
  
• The full allocation of resources to fight fires in the Amazon. 

Burning the Amazon is not inevitable. It is a choice that we cannot afford to make. 

Together, we need a global outcry to protect the Amazon rainforest, and ourselves, before it’s too late.