Fires in the Amazon are started for two purposes – deforestation or agricultural management. The large fires that we witness from space are likely associated with deforestation. Land speculators and farmers clear the forest and then burn the leftover vegetation. Many other fires are small in nature and burn under the forest canopy. They occur on the numerous small farms in the Amazon when farmers burn the vegetation that regrows on their fields. ¹ The latter process can contribute to forest degradation when the fires escape from agricultural fields. ²

Recurrent fires lead to a decline in the health of the impacted forest, which over time can result in even more intense fires. As of right now, we simply don’t know what proportion of the Amazonian fires fall into each of these categories, nor do we know the scope of their impacts on forest health.

The causes are both technological and structural

It’s important to recognize that destruction is not the goal of a vast majority of fires set in the Amazon. Farmers use fires to manage their land because they lack access to machinery or fertilizers. They also use them because their risks ³ of investing in other technologies are too high since they are often exposed to fires that have escaped from their neighbors’ properties.

Though Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro seeks to pit agricultural development against Amazonian protection, farmers stand to benefit substantially from choosing improved agricultural practices and forest conservation over deforestation and fire use. The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) has identified numerous locally appropriate technologies, including integrated crop and livestock systems and agroforestry, which can more than triple the profits and yields of farmers, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. ⁴ Our research has also shown that when land becomes scarce through a strengthening of forest protection policies, farmers see these technologies as more appealing ⁵ and have substantially intensified their production ⁶ .

Timing and partnerships are critical

It would be naïve to think that intensification alone would solve the problem of Amazonian deforestation. Indeed, improvements in agricultural practices, when driven by market stimuli alone, can lead to more deforestation. ⁷ But when stimulated by changes in environmental policy, as has recently occurred ⁸ , intensification can go hand and hand with reductions in deforestation.

To move forward, companies need to work in partnership with local governments and farmers’ unions to provide financial resources for improved agricultural technologies alongside strict conservation policies, such as territorial approaches to market exclusion and financing based on conservation performance. These efforts need to be bold and transformative – they need to enable large groups of farmers within the same area to simultaneously eliminate fire use and adopt more sustainable practices or else they won’t work.

A window of opportunity

The recent fires in the Amazon seem devastating, but the public outrage and media interest they have generated are creating an important window for ramping up forest conservation, even in light of Brazil’s own declining federal forest governance. Companies are eager to show that they can be part of the solution. ⁹ Civil society and international governments seem poised to throw millions of dollars at the problem. ¹⁰

Rather than one-off pledges focused only on recent fires, these actors should invest in partnerships with local governments that aim to reconcile conservation with sustainable development in the Amazon through the transformation of agricultural practices.