BRASILIA: A record high number of fires scorched Brazil’s Amazon and Pantanal wetlands last month, official data showed on Sunday, as deforestation and climate change wreaked havoc on some of the planet’s most valuable ecosystems.
The Amazon rainforest has been described as the Earth’s “lungs” due to its role in producing almost 10 percent of the world’s oxygen.
The Pantanal further south is one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands and a biodiversity paradise that extends across Brazil’s borders into Paraguay and Bolivia.
The number of fires typically fall in October as the Amazon approaches the rainy season.
But Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE) on Sunday recorded 17,326 fires in the Amazon in October, more than double the number seen in the same month in 2019.
Satellite imagery showed close to 100,000 fires in the first 10 months of 2020, more than were seen in the whole of last year.
The INPE also detected almost 3,000 individual fires in the Pantanal, a new monthly record since data collection began in 1998.
The region — 23 percent of which is estimated to have gone up in smoke this year — has seen a record-breaking 21,115 fires so far this year, more than double the number registered in all of 2019.
Experts and environmental NGOs blame the worsening fires on Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic who supports opening both regions to logging and farming.
Some fires are the result of burning to prepare the land for livestock, despite a 120-day ban on the practice imposed in July.
“With deforestation rates increasing in recent years, warnings by researchers were ignored by the government: deforestation and fire go together,” said Mariana Napolitano, the head of the science program at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Brazil.
“After deforesting the jungle, the offenders set fires to clean up the accumulated organic material... at the end of the month, with the arrival of the rains, the pace of the fires seems to be slowing down, but we can hardly depend on climate factors,” she said.
“What happened in the dry season in the Amazon and Pantanal cannot be repeated.”
Climate change has also played a role in the fires, with a team of international researchers warning this year that rising global temperatures posed a “critical threat” to the Pantanal’s delicate ecosystem.
President Bolsonaro has denounced a campaign of “disinformation” about the Pantanal and the Amazon, even blaming local indigenous people and activists for setting the fires.
Record fires ravage Brazil’s Amazon and Pantanal regions
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Record fires ravage Brazil’s Amazon and Pantanal regions
- The Amazon rainforest has been described as the Earth’s “lungs” due to its role in producing almost 10 percent of the world’s oxygen
- Experts and environmental NGOs blame the worsening fires on Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro
Jakarta records nearly 2m respiratory infections as air quality worsens
- Toddlers make up over 19% of Jakarta’s 2025 respiratory-infection cases
- In 2024, Jakarta’s average air quality at least 6 times over WHO safe limit
JAKARTA: Air pollution in Jakarta has contributed to nearly 2 million cases of respiratory illness in 2025, local health authorities said on Tuesday, raising concerns about the long-term health of the residents of the world’s most populous city.
Jakarta has consistently ranked among the world’s most polluted cities, regularly recording “unhealthy” levels of PM2.5, a measurement of particulate matter — solid and liquid particles suspended in the air that can be inhaled and cause respiratory diseases.
There were more than 1.9 million acute respiratory-infection cases between January and October of this year, according to the Jakarta Health Agency.
“Based on our data, cases of acute respiratory infection increased from mid-year and peaked in October. We also found that toddlers make up for over 19 percent of the cases … There are more cases (overall in 2025) compared to 2024,” agency chief Ani Ruspitawati told Arab News on Tuesday.
Air pollution, as well as high population density and human mobility, were among the risk factors for the high prevalence of acute respiratory infections in Jakarta, she added.
These cases of respiratory illness were only recorded among the national capital region’s 11 million residents. And did not account for the entire 42 million people living in the greater Jakarta area — which ranked as the world’s most populated city in a UN report published last month.
Yet the capital’s satellite cities, such as South Tangerang, have also ranked among the world’s most polluted over the years, as levels of microscopic harmful particles in these areas exceeded the safety limit set by the World Health Organization.
According to a June report published by the Helsinki-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the 2024 level of PM2.5 across the Greater Jakarta area averaged between 30 to 55 micrograms per cubic meter, which is between six to 11 times the WHO’s threshold.
“These rising cases of acute respiratory infection is a sign that air quality in Indonesia has worsened, with air quality in the greater Jakarta area being the worst,” the Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives said in a statement.
“Air pollution is a huge threat for health and the climate. Air pollution in urban and rural areas can produce fine particles that can cause strokes, heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory infections.”
