The Colombian capital Bogota is threatened by smoke from large forest fires that have been raging in the Colombian Amazon rainforest for several days. Local authorities declared an “ecological emergency” on Saturday. The fires are the size of a city like Paris.
The fires are raging about 350 kilometers from the capital, but the wind pushed the smoke to the northwest. Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez says more than half of the monitoring stations have had substandard air quality for 48 hours. Lopez asked the capital’s 8 million residents to avoid physical activity for the next several hours.
The government says the fires were started by rebels who no longer wish to respect the historic 2016 peace agreement. The agreement led to the disarmament of the Marxist guerrilla movement Farc. According to Defense Minister Diego Molano, the dissidents, as they are called, want to “seize land (…) for illegal intensive livestock farming”. He has published a list of 17 suspected arsonists.
In the department of Guaviare, “code red” was announced. Governor Heydeer Palacia said “ten thousand hectares” went up in flames. The Chiribiquete National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has also been affected.
Increased deforestation
According to testimonies collected by the AFP news agency in the region in October, farmers and landowners take advantage of the dry season, from January to April, to burn felled trees, replace them with coca plants or graze livestock. Government data shows that deforestation has increased significantly in the country’s Amazon region in recent years.
It would be a direct result of the peace deal with the Farc, which gave up many tracts of land they controlled before that time. Other armed groups took that land and are now taking advantage of the absence and inactivity of the state in those isolated zones.
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