Brazilian president flies into Amazon amid alarm over droughts and wildfires

Handout picture released by the Brazilian presidency shows the drought-hit Jaquiri river in Manaquiri, Amazonas State, northern Brazil on Tuesday. Photograph: Ricardo Stuckert/Brazilian Presidency/AFP/Getty Images

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has flown into the Amazon amid growing alarm over the droughts and wildfires sweeping the rainforest region and others parts of Brazil.

Speaking during a visit to a riverside community near the city of Tefé, the Brazilian president said Amazonia was suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years. He said he had come to discover “what is going on with these mighty rivers” that in some places now resemble deserts.

Lula voiced concern over the often criminally set fires that are consuming three of Brazil’s six biomes: the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Pantanal wetlands.

“It seems to me that things are getting worse, year after year after year,” Lula said as he visited drought-stricken communities in Amazonas state, where all 62 municipalities have declared a state of emergency. More than 340,000 people have reportedly been affected.

“In the Pantanal we’ve had the worst drought in the last 73 years … This is a problem that we have to fix because otherwise humanity is going to destroy our planet,” Lula added. “We cannot destroy that which we rely on for our life.”

The president’s visit came as huge swaths of South America’s largest country, and neighbours such as Bolivia and Peru, grappled with the consequences of extreme climate events that have caused temperatures to hit record highs and fires to rage.

Schools have been closed and flights diverted in Rio Branco, the capital of the Amazon state of Acre, after smoke enveloped the city and pollution levels soared. In the city of Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia state, the Madeira River has fallen to its lowest level since the late 1960s.

The effects of the wildfires and drought have been felt as far away as Rio and São Paulo, where air quality has also plummeted in recent days. On Monday an expert from Brazil’s space institution, Inpe, said smoke from the fires had covered a 5m sq km area – about 60% of the country.

“We’ve reached a historic moment, the likes of which we’ve never reached before,” said Danicley de Aguiar, an Amazon campaigner for Greenpeace Brazil who is monitoring the situation.

“We’ve had severe droughts before in Brazil but not to this extent. I don’t think we’ve ever had a drought that affects not only the north but also the midwest, the south and the south-east and a part of the north-east too.

“We are facing a gigantic drought … and a drought that has come combined with fire.”

Aguiar said at least five Indigenous territories in the Amazon were burning this week.

The activist said one such territory, Sararé, near Brazil’s western border with Bolivia, had seen 59% of its total area burned. Fires were also raging in the Kayapó Indigenous territory to its north-east. “And after the drought comes hunger,” warned Aguiar, who feared the crisis could jeopardise crops Indigenous communities depended on to survive.

Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has partly attributed the situation, which is expected to worsen in the coming weeks, to the effects of global heating and the El Niño climate pattern.