On the morning of Wednesday, 28 August, the European Copernicus programme reported that the fires ravaging the Amazon are advancing, publishing on its Twitter account the first satellite image received the previous afternoon, a few hours before Brazil made a complete about-turn and finally seemed ready to accept the financial assistance offered by the G7 summit with a number of conditions attached.
On Monday, the Earth observation programme was activated by the European Commission to assess the extent of the damage and to offer satellite maps to any countries that requested them (see EUROPE 12314/11).
“The enormous wildfire that is raging in the area across the borders of Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay has continued to develop. It seems it affects mostly grasslands and shrubs”, says the tweet from Copernicus.
On Tuesday evening, Brazil, which, for reasons of sovereignty, had initially refused the offer of more than €20 million made by the G7 in Biarritz to fight the fires, eventually declared, in the words of a spokesperson for the Brazilian president quoted by AFP, that it was “open” to help from “foreign organisations and even countries”, as long as it “did not conflict with Brazilian sovereignty and the management of funds remained our responsibility”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)