For decades, global warming has made rainforests like the Amazon drier and more vulnerable to wildfires, and the fires themselves have become more frequent and more destructive.
The year 2019 was an alarming wake-up call: the worst wildfire season in a decade destroyed over 47 million hectares of rainforest – an area larger than Sweden – and released millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Scientists agree that there exists a tipping point beyond which the damage done to the Amazon will be irreparable, as the forest would progressively degrade into grasslands. This disappearance would be an ecological disaster on a planetary level.
When you see fire in nature, it doesn't make you afraid, it makes you sad. It fills you with despair to see something you try to protect being destroyed.
UNESCO x LVMH partnership for the Amazon
In response to this alarming wake-up call, UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme launched the UNESCO x LVMH project, a new partnership to identify and address the main drivers of deforestation in the Amazon region.
The programme identifies the most high-impact initiatives within UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, then harnesses scientific expertise, private-sector funding and local partners like the Fundação Vitória Amazônica, to provide these initiatives with the support they need to scale up and protect the rainforest.
This love, this passion for our Amazon, I’ve had it in my heart ever since I was a child. But if you try to fight a fire with just bravery alone, you’re taking a great risk. You need proper equipment and knowledge.
Why is training volunteer firefighters such an effective strategy?
In the Amazon region, slash-and-burn operations to clear land for crops are regularly practiced by industrial agriculture and small-scale farmers alike. But without proper care these “controlled fires” can easily get out of hand and are among the main causes of wildfires.
When a fire does break out in the Amazon rainforest, which spans 8 countries and nearly 7 million km2, it’s rare to find a fire station just down the road with a full crew ready to tackle the flames. Instead, local residents are usually the first – and sometimes the only – people available to deal with these emergencies. They must rely on their resourcefulness, bravery and makeshift tools to extinguish these fires as best they can.
Providing these individuals with basic firefighting equipment and training gives them the means to protect this critical forest that is their home and which provides their livelihoods as well as innumerable ecosystem services.
The community training we provide aims to combat small-scale forest fires before they become major, extreme events requiring the involvement of larger state apparatus and teams.
Our intensive training sessions last a full week, and the communities selected for training are identified using satellite data and heatmaps to target those areas that have the highest incidence of fire outbreaks. The courses are being run in four UNESCO Biosphere Reserves across 3 countries: Beni Biosphere Reserve (Bolivia), Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve (Bolivia), Central Amazon Biosphere Reserve (Brazil) and Manu Biosphere Reserve (Peru). Trainings in Brazil are coordinated on the ground through UNESCO’s local partner, the Fundação Vitória Amazônica, with additional support from partners including the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and the United States Forest Service.
In total, nearly 700 volunteers of all ages have been capacitate, over half of them women. Each brigade is organised into a group of 7-10 fighters with a designated leader who is responsible for mobilizing the team in the event of a fire.
Brigades receive portable 20l water pumps with a sprayer, chainsaws, rubber fire beaters, brushcutters, fire rakes, machetes and protective clothing (helmets, military safety boots, flame-retardant balaclavas, protective gloves, safety goggles…)
Each course combines in-class lessons, practice drills and training in how to use the equipment provided. The emphasis is on firefighting, but even more so on fire-prevention. Volunteers learn valuable skills, for instance they learn how to create effective firebreaks and to identify the risk factors that can turn a ‘controlled burning’ into a potential hazard.
I’m 59 years old and always dreamed of being a firefighter, but I only knew what I’d seen on TV and in magazines. Now I’ve learned that there’s a real technique to putting out fires: you have to go in with a fire-beater, a shovel, a rake… everything!
The transformative impact of this initiative cannot be overstated. Though these firefighters may be few in number, their dedication and newly acquired expertise will have far-reaching benefits for their communities and the environment. Every time they put their new skills into practice, they will be preventing potential ecological catastrophes from unfolding. They will, thereby, be safeguarding the invaluable biodiversity and ecological balance of the Amazon rainforest.
