Smoke from burning vegetation rises in a rainforest in Yanomami Indigenous land, Roraima state, Brazil, March 2, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has experienced its largest blazes on record in the first four months of the year, with the environmental workers union on Monday placing partial blame on lower government spending on firefighting.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has staked his international reputation on protecting the Amazon rainforest and restoring Brazil as a leader on climate policy.

The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, is vital to curbing catastrophic global warming because of the vast amount of greenhouse gas it absorbs.

A record drought in the Amazon rainforest region, driven by the El Nino climate phenomenon and global warming, has helped contribute to dry conditions fueling fires this year.

More than 12,000 square kilometers (4,633 square miles) of the Brazil’s Amazon rainforest burned between January and April, the most in over two decades of data, according to Brazil’s space research agency Inpe. That’s an area larger than Qatar, or nearly the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut.

Fires in the Amazon generally do not occur naturally but are ignited by people, often seeking to clear land for agriculture.

Firefighting budget cuts are also partially to blame, environmental workers union Ascema said in a statement. They complained that this year’s budget for environmental agency Ibama to fight fires is 24% lower than 2023.

In a statement, Brazil’s environment ministry said that the Amazon fund, which draws on donations from foreign governments, put 405 million reais ($79.4 million) toward firefighting at the state level under Lula’s current administration, which began in 2023.

The federal government sent about 380 firefighters to Roraima, the northern Amazon state that was hit the hardest by the fires, which were intensified by drought, the ministry said.

It did not respond to questions on cuts to Ibama’s firefighting budget. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ibama agents have suspended field work since January amid tense negotiations with the federal government for better pay and working conditions.

Ascema has rejected the latest government offer and demanded larger salary rises after more than a decade of paltry increases and dwindling staff.

While the area burned is a record for the first four months of the year, it pales in comparison to blazes in the peak dry season from August to November, when an area that size can burn in a single month.

“The government needs to understand that without total engagement from environmental workers, the situation foreseen for this year is unprecedented catastrophe,” said Ascema President Cleberson Zavaski.

“Prevention efforts, such as raising awareness about ignitions, creating firebreaks in strategic areas, and conducting prescribed burns, depend on employing people with stable conditions,” said Manoela Machado, a fire researcher at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “These measures will influence the severity of the fire crisis when the dry conditions allow fires to spread.”

A logo of the Amazon fulfillment is seen outside the Amazon fulfillment centre in Kent, Washington. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on September 26, charging the online retailer with harming consumers with higher prices in the latest U.S. government legal action aimed at breaking Big Tech’s dominance of the internet.

The lawsuit had been expected after years of complaints that Amazon.com and other tech giants abused their dominance of search, social media and online retailing to become gate keepers on the most lucrative aspects of the internet.

Amazon said that the FTC lawsuit was wrongheaded and would hurt consumers by leading to higher prices and slower deliveries.

“The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store,” said David Zapolsky, Amazon’s general counsel.

The lawsuit, which was joined by 17 State attorneys general, follows a four-year investigation and federal lawsuits filed against Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms’ Facebook.

“The FTC and its State partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon,” the agency said in a statement.

The FTC said that it was asking the court to issue a permanent injunction ordering Amazon.com to stop its unlawful conduct. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle, where Amazon is based.

Amazon shares were down 3%.

The FTC said that Amazon, founded in 1994 and worth more than $1 trillion, punished sellers that sought to offer prices that were lower than Amazon’s by making it difficult for consumers to find the seller on Amazon’s platform.

Other allegations include that Amazon gave preference to its own products on its platforms over competitors also on the platform.

FTC chair Lina Khan said that Amazon had used illegal tactics to fend off companies that would have risen to challenge its monopoly.

“Amazon is now exploiting that monopoly power to harm its customers, both the tens of millions of families that shop on Amazon’s platform and the hundreds of thousands of sellers that use Amazon to reach them,” she said.

Ms. Khan, while a law student, wrote about Amazon.com’s dominance in online retailing for The Yale Law Journal and was on the staff of the House committee that wrote a report issued in 2020 that advocated reining in four tech giants: Amazon.com, Apple, Google and Facebook.

The need to take action against Big Tech has been one of the few ideas that Democrats and Republicans have agreed on. During the Trump administration which ended in 2021, the Justice Department and FTC opened probes into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

The Justice Department has sued Google twice – once under Republican Donald Trump regarding its search business and a second time on advertising technology since Democratic President Joe Biden took office. The FTC sued Facebook during the Trump administration and Biden’s FTC has pressed forward with the lawsuit.