Forest fires in Peru leave 16 people dead, but the government refuses to declare a state of emergency

Peru is in a state of emergency. The death toll and the number of forest fires are increasing every day, while The Executive refuses to declare a State of Emergency despite multiple requests from regions where forests and other natural ecosystems are burning.

The latest report from the National Institute of Civil Defense (Indeci) indicates that for Tuesday, September 17 There are now 16 people dead in seven departments of the country and 140 injured, While 34 forest fires remain active, 234 have already been recorded so far this year. The figures also indicate that between 2021 and 2024, 1,118 forest fires have occurred in Peru.

“There is an environmental emergency situation,” says Mariano Castro, former deputy minister of environmental management at the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) in Peru. “A disaster situation that has several dimensions, not only environmental, but also health and agricultural production, among others,” Castro adds.

The former vice minister questioned Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen who the day before said that there were still no “reasons so critical that justify a declaration of a State of Emergency.” In this regard, Castro believes that “The serious magnitude of the crisis and the scope of what a declaration of environmental emergency means are not being adequately assessed.”

The Amazon Regional Commonwealth, made up of the regions of Amazonas, Cusco, Huánuco, Loreto, Madre de Dios, San Martín and Ucayali, requested in a public statement “the urgent declaration of an environmental emergency in the Amazon.” A similar action was taken by the Macro Region of Northeast Peru, made up of five regions, which asked the government to declare an emergency in the departments of Piura, Lambayeque, Cajamarca, Amazonas and San Martín. In total, 11 regions have requested that an emergency be declared in the country.

Read more | Forest fires: six people dead in Peru and almost four million hectares lost in Bolivia

Damage to ecosystems

Real-time satellite information from the National Emergency Operations Center (COEN) shows the 34 fires currently occurring in 16 departments of the country. Meanwhile, the Global Forest Watch map reflects 40,387 alerts for heat sources in Peru, between August 16 and September 16, 2024.

Satellite images from monitoring by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States government also show the magnitude of forest fires in Peru. This map shows the concentration of hot spots, many of them active fires, mainly in the central jungle of the country, as well as in the Andes and northern Amazon.

The air is unhealthy in the Peruvian Amazon, and although the most critical situation is in the Brazilian jungle, the IQAir portal, a company dedicated to air monitoring, shows a cloud of air that is dangerous to health that still persists in the regions of Iquitos, San Martín, Ucayali and Puerto Maldonado.

Fanny Cornejo, director of the Yunkawasi Civil Association, points out that “areas that normally do not burn naturally are burning.” The biologist explains that the tropical Andes are a very humid ecosystem with cloud forests. “The normal way these ecosystems have evolved is that these forests breathe water. They have a humidity of 99%. So, the loss of this amount of water and this humidity generates different effects on the availability of food and resources. We are generating an ecosystem degeneration whose effects we will see in the following years.”

Cornejo explains how the fire that occurred in the Corosha Peasant Community, in the Amazonas region, has destroyed one of the most important habitats for the Andean bear or spectacled bear, an emblematic species in South America that is in a vulnerable situation due, precisely, to the loss of its habitat.

“It is an area that the Corosha Peasant Community at one point requested to be declared a private conservation area, but this was not done,” he says, referring to the area of ​​some 1,000 hectares with natural grasslands that were in a good state of conservation and had not been burned for more than 20 years.

According to the latest report from the Amazonas Regional Emergency Operations Center, nine forest fires remain active in this department and the damage report indicates that 16,801 hectares have been lost, mostly natural cover.

Like Corosha, the fires are impacting dozens of rural and native communities in different parts of the country, as well as cities, mainly in the Amazon, where the smoke is causing damage to health and daily activities.

This Tuesday, September 17, the David Abensur Rengifo Airport in Pucallpa suspended its flights due to a large cloud of smoke covering the sky as a result of the two fires that are still active in this region: one in the district of Nueva Requena, in the province of Coronel Portillo, and another in Curimaná, in the province of Padre Abad. According to information from Indeci, these fires have been active since September 9 and 10 respectively.

Read more | The controversy that comes after the fires: reforestation or restoration?

The environmental emergency that never comes

Mariano Castro explains that the declaration of environmental emergency is not just a rule, but serves to activate actions aimed at containing forest fires and the damage and losses they cause, which in turn “require policies and programs of attention oriented towards restoration”, with short, medium and long term action plans.

Castro compares the current situation with the declaration of emergency that was given after the Repsol oil spill, which occurred in the Peruvian sea in 2022. “At that time, 700 hectares were affected by Repsol and, now, according to information from Serfor [Servicio Nacional Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre]between January and June 2024, 70,000 hectares have been affected. We are talking about 100 times more,” says the former Vice Minister of Environmental Management of Minam. “This means not understanding the magnitude of the damage, which may also continue to grow, since specialists in the subject indicate that the damage may triple between September and October, which further justifies the need for a declaration of environmental emergency.”

Castro also questions the country’s “deficient, limited and mistaken agricultural policy.” “The central responsibility for the issue of forest fires lies with the agricultural sector, because it has not done what is necessary to prevent and adopt adequate measures to prevent this situation from occurring.”

For Castro, in addition to drought, climate change and the increase in temperature recorded in history, the fires are closely related to agricultural practices to create new areas for cultivation or to take advantage of existing ones, both in the Andean and Amazonian regions. Consequently, the former vice-minister is deeply surprised that there is no clear voice from the agricultural sector on this issue.

“We have had a late response and we do not have everything necessary to deal with these fires. The General Fire Department should be the specialized area for these events, but they do not have the resources, the capabilities, the equipment, or the training to do so,” says Castro, who also mentions that the National Service of Protected Natural Areas by the State (Sernanp) has an efficient corps of forest firefighter rangers, but it is not sufficient to deal with the emergency, considering the magnitude of the fires currently observed.

Enrique Ortiz, president of the Amazon Conservation Board (ACCA) and one of its founders, points out that “this year is critical” in Peru, because several factors have come together behind the forest fires.

Ortiz mentions four of these factors that are causing forest fires in South America. First, there is the constant increase in temperature, which is part of climate change. He also mentions the La Niña phenomenon, which in Peru is accompanied by dryness in the cloudiness. The third is the anomalies that are occurring in the winds coming from the Atlantic Ocean and the fourth factor is deforestation.

“It is a snowball, the perfect storm where several factors have come together. And we have seen it since last year. It has been a clear prediction and there have been several articles published in different sources that were already talking about the fact that a very serious year was coming, an unusual year,” says Ortiz.

The expert also mentions that these “unusual years are becoming the rule”, as he clarifies that what used to be exceptions are now frequent events. “Before, it was said that there was an El Niño event every ten years, but today this abnormality is the rule.”