BRASÍLIA: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced new measures on Tuesday to alleviate drought in the Brazilian Amazon, as his government faces mounting pressure to combat a “pandemic” of fires. Brazil has been parched by a historic drought that experts link to climate change, sparking fires that have spread more easily and produced clouds of smoke that have reached neighboring Uruguay and Argentina.

The country’s Supreme Court has ordered immediate government action to contain what it has called a “fire pandemic”, which is also threatening to destroy the biodiversity-rich wetland sanctuary of Pantanal. “We take the need to combat drought, deforestation, fires, very seriously,” Lula said in the northern state of Amazonas.

Accompanied by several ministers, the president visited riverside communities living in the world’s largest rainforest, which are suffering from the worst drought in 70 years to hit Latin America’s biggest country. The high temperatures have dried up rivers used by isolated communities for navigation, food and water supply.

The Brazilian government announced dredging works on the Amazon River and other waterways and the delivery of water purifiers. In the state capital Manaus, Lula announced the creation of an authority to tackle “extreme climate risks”. “Our focus must be on adaptation,” he said.

The new authority was among Lula’s campaign promises for his third government (2023-2026), devised by his environment minister, Marina Silva. “These events are going to become more and more frequent, more and more intense,” Silva said. Sao Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, was the world’s most polluted major metropolis on Tuesday for a second day in a row, according to Switzerland-based air quality monitoring company IQAir.

Lula said “the situation is delicate” and deteriorates every year. With more than 5,000 active fire outbreaks on Tuesday, Brazil accounts for 76 percent of the areas affected by fires in South America, according to data from the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) published by official media. So far this year, some 6.7 million hectares have burned in the Brazilian Amazon, amounting to 1.6 percent of the rainforest, according to official figures. — AFP