“Forest fire season is coming. How can we stop the Amazon burning? The Guardian investigates fire in the state of Pará - to reveal the loopholes that allow deforestation to be legitimised”, 5th May 2020

…Every year fires roar across the Amazon, and in just a few months they will be here again. But last August the number of blazes reached a nine-year high, and sparked an international crisis for Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Months later, their traces hung over the forests in the Amazon state of Pará, leaving blackened logs and charred tree stumps where there was once rainforest…Police are still investigating Novo Progresso farmers for allegedly coordinating a “fire day” last August.The town sits beside the Jamanxim national forest, a protected reserve of more than 1.3 million hectares...that is one of the most devastated in Brazil…Inside Jamanxim’s borders, as forest gave way to a sweep of cattle farms, we found more fire: a patch of forest still smouldering in places, trees swiped at waist height, and the felled, blackened trunk of a regal brazil nut tree in the scorched earth… The military dictatorship that ruled Brazil until 1985 – often lauded by Bolsonaro - encouraged migration and built highways to force development into the Amazon region, but failed to impose a functioning property system. Instead, it sold off chunks of forest – then largely government owned – to private investors. It also handed out lots to migrants who had been encouraged to move there from the poorer north-east.Much of this land was sold on later, often in deals involving unscrupulous notaries in a range of scams that continue until today, aided by the remoteness and lawlessness of the Amazon region. Adding to the disorder, under Brazilian law, improving land you are on can strengthen an eventual ownership claim. And Amazon farmers often argue that previous governments had encouraged them to move to the region, only to plonk a reserve on top of them years later even if they actually squatted the land afterwards.