Amazon Fires Up 30% in the Dry Season
Why Brazil Assembled Its Largest Firefighting Force Ever

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The Amazon's dry season begins in July and runs through October. This year the alert level is higher than usual: the probability of an El Niño event forming is estimated at 61%, and if it develops, it is expected to bring severe heat and drought to the rainforest. Getting ahead of this, the Brazilian government raised its 2026 fire-response budget by 28% year on year, to 1.023 billion reais (about 197 million dollars), and hired 4,410 additional federal firefighters. Here is what is happening behind what is being called the largest such preparation on record.

What happened

The numbers around the Amazon this year contain a paradox. Satellite data show deforestation approaching an eight-year low, and the Lula administration's "protect the Amazon" policy is showing real results. Yet while deforestation falls, the number of fires rose by roughly 30% between January and May 2026.

One reason is arson as a tool of illegal deforestation. Data from INPE (Brazil's National Institute for Space Research) reveal that 51% of recently deforested areas show signs of having been burned just beforehand. Set fire to a forest that climate change has made drier, and you can "clear" land without heavy machinery. Even if the deforestation statistics improve, the amount of forest being lost has to be measured by other indicators — that is the reality.

Context: the "worst-case scenario" El Niño could draw

According to a basin-wide climate risk assessment published in 2026 by the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (OTCA), an El Niño event would sharply raise the risks of reduced rainfall, falling river levels and spreading wildfires. The environmental NGO Amazon Watch also warned in a June 18 report that "El Niño returns to an Amazon already on the brink." Researchers, meanwhile, note that the effects tend to appear with a lag, and that the more serious fire season may actually come in 2027.

The irony is that even the Brazilian government, having substantially increased both budget and personnel, finds itself unable to say whether this will be enough. The combination of climate change and illegal activity is becoming a problem that preventive investment alone cannot fully contain.

The question: climate finance as a promise that never arrives

The other problem is the "last mile" of climate finance, still unresolved even after COP30 (held in late 2025 in Belém, the gateway to the Amazon). In an interview with executives of Latimpacto, a Latin American social-investment network (published by Mongabay), it was pointed out once again that much of the money internationally pledged for tropical forest protection never actually reaches Indigenous peoples and local communities inside the Amazon. Funds' investment criteria and accreditation processes do not mesh with realities on the ground, and the money stalls at the level of donor countries and large NGOs.

Emergency response to the fire risk in front of us, and long-term improvement of access to funding. Having to advance both at once — that is the position Amazon policy occupies from 2026 onward.

My perspective

The news that "deforestation is at an eight-year low" and the news that "fires are up 30%" leave completely different impressions when read separately. Look only at the former and you get a policy success story; look only at the latter and you get a story of crisis. What this case makes me think about is the pattern in which, when one indicator improves, the problem itself changes shape and reappears in another indicator. Tighten enforcement against deforestation, and fire becomes the substitute tool. Researching systems and regulation, I run into this same pattern again and again. Regulation does not erase problems; it often reshapes them.

That is why, while I do credit the Brazilian government for assembling its largest firefighting force ever, I think we need to keep watching multiple indicators side by side, asking whether this too might someday be circumvented, just like the improved deforestation statistics. In the end, what decides whether the forest has shrunk is not which statistic looks clean — it is the forest itself.

Glossary

temporada seca = the dry season; in the Amazon this runs from July to October. queimada = Portuguese for burning or wildfire; a word that appears in virtually every report on Amazon fires. desmatamento = Portuguese for deforestation; in Spanish it is deforestación.

The achievement of cutting deforestation is real. But on its own, it cannot protect a forest that has gone dry.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.