"Business worth billions"

Brazil: Fires destroy untouched rainforest

Half of the fires would affect the primary forest in Brazil.(Bild: APA/AFP)

Devastating forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon are increasingly destroying untouched rainforest. These valuable forests are being deliberately destroyed, warns the environmental organization WWF.

53 percent of the fires registered in the region in August were concentrated in so-called primary forest, WWF announced on the occasion of Tropical Forest Day on Saturday.

"Billion-dollar business" with previously untouched forest
"Previously untouched rainforest is being deliberately set on fire," said WWF Latin America expert Roberto Maldonado. "The fires are being used to illegally develop land. This is a billion-dollar business."

88,000 fires already registered this year
The worst fires in almost 20 years are currently raging in the Brazilian Amazon region. Almost 88,000 fires have been registered in the region since the beginning of the year, according to data from the Institute for Space Research (INPE), which is responsible for satellite monitoring. This was the highest figure for the period up to mid-September since 2005. The situation this year has been exacerbated by a severe drought.

According to the WWF, around 20 percent of the original rainforest has already been destroyed. Scientists expect that a tipping point will be reached in the region when 25 percent of the forest has been destroyed. This could then lead to severe and in some cases unstoppable and irreversible changes in the ecosystem. Because the rainforest in the Amazon region binds immense amounts of the greenhouse gas CO2, it is also of great importance for the global climate.