In recent years, Brazil has recorded deforestation records in the cerrado, low river levels in the Amazon, heavy rains in the South, and fires in the Pantanal. In 2024, due to a mix of climatic and human factors, fires are spreading across the world's largest floodplain in an unprecedented manner for this time of year, putting pressure—and doubt—on the fire-fighting plans of public agencies, especially the federal government.
Rodrigo Agostinho, president of Ibama (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), advocates for redesigning the strategy for combating and preventing wildfires, floods, and other extreme climatic events. "We master firefighting techniques, have brigades, but we've never had a fleet of aircraft, a structure," he says to Folha. "Brazil has one of the coolest things in the world, which is the smoke squadron, but it doesn't have a squadron against fire."
This week, the government made military aircraft available to help combat the fires. As Folha recently reported, the lack of planes and helicopters delays operations. Agostinho states that environmental agencies are operating with a plan developed after the 2023 fires and that the agency currently has 2,100 brigades, a record number—expected to reach 2,400 by the end of the year. "But even with everything we've designed so far, it may be insufficient. And then we have to look at what we can rethink. The challenge is to set up a structure to match the climate crisis. Brazil still doesn't have this structure. It's not Ibama's crisis: it's national, involving states and municipalities," he says.