[6] Fires normally occur around the dry season as slash-and-burn methods are used to clear the forest to make way for agriculture, livestock, logging, and mining, leading to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

The increased rates of fire counts in 2019 led to international concern about the fate of the Amazon rainforest, which is the world's largest terrestrial carbon dioxide sink and plays a significant role in mitigating global warming.

The increasing rates were first reported by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, INPE) in June and July 2019 through satellite monitoring systems, but international attention was drawn to the situation by August 2019 when NASA corroborated INPE's findings,[7] and smoke from the fires, visible from satellite imagery, darkened the city of São Paulo despite being thousands of kilometers from the Amazon.

[13] The flora also generates significant quantities of water vapor through transpiration which travel large distances to other parts of South America via atmospheric rivers and contribute to the precipitation in these areas.

[24] Man-made fires in the Amazon also tend to elevate their smoke into the higher atmosphere due to the more intense burn of the dry biomass, compared with naturally occurring wildfires.

[53] However, in 2014, Brazil fell into an economic crisis, and as part of that recovery, pushed heavily on its exports of beef and soy to help bolster its economy, which caused a reversal in the falling deforestation rates.

[61] Jair Bolsonaro was elected as President of Brazil in October 2018 and took office in January 2019, after which he and his ministries changed governmental policies to weaken protection of the rainforest and make it favorable for farmers to continue practices of slash-and-burn clearing,[22] thus accelerating the deforestation from previous years.

[6] Land-grabbers had used Bolsonaro's election to extend their activities into cutting in the land of the previously isolated Apurinã people in Amazonas where the "world's largest standing tracts of unbroken rainforest" are found.

[24][62] Bolsonaro and his ministers had also segmented the environmental agency, placing part of its control under the agricultural ministry, which is led by the country's farming lobby, weakened protections on natural reserves and territories belonging to indigenous people, and encouraged businesses to file counter-land claims against regions managed by sustainable forestry practices.

[79] INPE reported that in the period from January 1 to August 29, across South America, and not exclusive to the Amazon rainforest, there were 84,957 fires in Brazil, 26,573 in Venezuela, 19,265 in Bolivia, 14,363 in Colombia, 14,969 in Argentina, 10,810 in Paraguay, 6,534 in Peru, 2,935 in Chile, 898 in Guyana, 407 in Uruguay, 328 in Ecuador, 162 in Suriname, and 11 in French Guiana.

On that day, the smoke plume from the fires in Rondônia and Amazonas caused the sky to darken at around 2 p.m. over São Paulo—which is almost 2,800 kilometres (1,700 miles) away from the Amazon basin on the eastern coast.

[75][20] INPE and NASA data, along with photographs of the ongoing fires and impacts, caught international attention and became a rising topic on social media, with several world leaders, celebrities, and athletes expressing their concerns.

[103] After a report from Globo Rural reveal that a WhatsApp group of 70 people was involved with the Day of Fire,[104] Jair Bolsonaro determined the opening of investigations by Federal Police.

[105] In a webcast issued November 28, 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro blamed actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio for the rainforest wildfires, alleging NGOs set the fires in return for donations.

[110] Ivaneide Bandeira Cardoso, founder of Kanindé, a Porto Velho-based advocacy group for indigenous communities, said Bolsonaro is directly responsible for the escalation of forest fires throughout the Amazon this year.

Cardoso said the wildfires are a "tragedy that affects all of humanity" since the Amazon plays an important role in the global ecosystem as a carbon sink to reduce the effects of climate change.

[126] With the wildfires on-going, both Macron and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar have stated they will refuse to ratify the trade deal unless Brazil commits to protecting the environment.

[127] Finance minister of Finland Mika Lintilä suggested the idea of an EU ban on Brazilian beef imports until the country takes steps to stop the deforestation.

[45][128] The Secretary-General of the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN), Øyvind Eggen, said that neither the "official deforestation figures" published by Brazilian authorities on November 18, 2019, nor the number of wildfires in Amazon in 2019, were normal.

[129][130] In her testimony presented to the hearing, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) economist, Monica de Bolle likened the rainforest to a "carbon bomb", as the fires lit for deforestation "may release as much as 200 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year, which would spur climate change at a much faster rate, not to mention associated changes in rainfall patterns that may result from deforestation.

[141][147] Political opponents of Morales alleged that the Supreme Decree 3973 Archived August 25, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, a mandate to further beef production in the Amazon region, is a major cause of the Bolivian fires.

According one of the engineers charged with monitoring satellite data showing the "evolution of the fires", the Pantanal is a "complex, fragile, and high-risk ecosystem because it's being transformed from a wetland to a productive system".

Hospitals in cities like Porto Velho had reported over three times the average number of cases of patients affected by smoke over the same year-to-year period in August 2019 than in other previous years.

Parts of the Amazon rainforest's dense canopy were destroyed by the fires, therefore, exposing the lower levels of the ecosystem, which then alters the energy flow of the food chain.

[164] On August 22, the Bishops Conference for Latin America called the fires a "tragedy" and urged the UN, the international community, and governments of Amazonian countries, to "take serious measures to save the world's lungs".

[92] Colombian President Ivan Duque stated he wanted to lead a conservation pact with the other nations that share the Amazon rainforest with plans to present this to the UN General Assembly.

"[102] United Nations Secretary General António Guterres stated on August 23, that: "In the midst of the global climate crisis, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity.

[172] During the summit, Macron and Chilean president Sebastián Piñera negotiated with the other nations to authorize US$22 million in emergency funding to Amazonian countries to help fight the fires.

[180][181] American actor Leonardo DiCaprio said his environmental organization Earth Alliance is donating $5 million to local groups and indigenous communities to help protect the Amazon.

[184][185] On August 26, 2019, Europe's richest man, Bernard Arnault, declared that his LVMH group will donate $11 million to aid in the fight against the Amazon rainforest wildfires.