After enduring its worst drought on record in 2024, Brazil closed the year with another alarming milestone: between January and December, 30.86m hectares of wilderness burned – an area larger than Italy.
The figure published in a new report is 79% higher than in 2023 and the largest recorded by Fire Monitor since its launch in 2019 by MapBiomas, an initiative by NGOs, universities and technology companies that monitors Brazil’s biomes.
The data could pose an embarrassment as Brazil prepares to host COP30 in Belém, the capital of the Amazonian state of Pará, in November.
Not only was the state the hardest hit by the fires, accounting for 24% of the total burned area, but the Amazon was also the most affected of Brazil’s six biomes, at 58%. The area scorched in the Amazon in 2024 exceeds the total burned across the country in 2023.
