 Over the years, there's been a lot of interest in many tropical areas, like in Indonesia and in Eastern Amazonia, on the danger of fire and on the spread of fire into tropical forests. But we see that this issue is also arising as an important focus in other parts where we had never talked about fires before. Like, for instance, in the Western Amazon. Could you tell us a bit about the work that we've been doing in that area and why all of a sudden we're really focusing on that area as well? In Western Amazonia, fires are becoming the main limitations for rural development and the main limitations for the conservation of biodiversity. Forest fires now are invading not just forests, but also invading large-scale oil palm plantations, small-holders agriculture fields, and even burning the houses, communities, or rural communities. It is becoming the main problem for any kind of rural development and conservation and for the environment. I know that there have been a few years, a few instances, some of them quite recent, of really devastating fires in the Western Amazon. Could you give us some examples or some details of what actually happened? There are two great examples of mega fires in Western Amazonia. The 2005 and the 2010 dry years in the Peruvian Amazon, Acre in Brazil and Pando in Bolivia, the economic activities almost paralyzed because the cities were covered by smoke and they were not connected by playing to the area. A lot of conservation areas were also affected by these fires. So wildfires were widespread in 2005 and 2010. But there are also another two events of mega fires reported more localized in the Columbia Amazon in 1987 and 1993. So there are these important events, what you call mega fires, that are tied to climate events as well, to extreme droughts. But are these fires now mostly a problem just during years of extreme drought or has this become more frequent or more generalized? Every year now oil palm plantations and the fields are small holders and forest protected, improtected areas are being burned. It doesn't depend on climate shocks anymore. That makes it a bit more difficult and interesting to know what are the other factors that are driving these annual fires in Western Amazonia. And what you mentioned that there are climatic changes, you also mentioned that there are large plantations going in Western Amazonia. Are there other factors that you see as happening? For instance, do factors like immigration from other areas really have an impact on this process of increasing danger from fires or other social or economic processes? Well, the Western Amazonia have witnessed several not just climatic shocks, several economic boons and demographic shocks. Let's take Pukalpe in Peru, Western Amazonia in the Peruvian Amazon where in the 80s and 90s have major immigration to the area from the highlands, from the poor areas in the Peruvian highlands from the Andes into the Amazon. We have records from the local municipalities in Pukalpe and Awaitia, the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. There is a report that every week arriving in Awaitia and Pukalpe an average of 15,000 people. If you count 15,000 people per week for fires, you can see the explosion of the population in the area, that shock, that demographic shock. It's also important in understanding why fires now are becoming a problem in the area. I would like to add another change and that's the process of urbanization with many people who worry rural and still in some sense remain rural also spend a lot of their time in the city. So for instance the kind of social cohesion that used to be a factor in controlling fire I believe in the rural areas now no longer exists. So when people work on their land they no longer tell their neighbors that they're going to use fire. They no longer work in large groups that could control the fire. So I would suggest that that also adds to the problem. So what do you think are the effects, if it doesn't change, what are the effects that we're going to see in both to the livelihoods and to the environments of western Amazonia? Fires won't discriminate. I think if that's what we're showing now, fires have enormous impact on the economics, on the livelihood of people. We have an increase what we call environmental refugees that people are living in their communities, are living in the land holdings and moving into the city due to the permanent fires. They cannot cope anymore, losing their farms, losing their crops every year. So they move to the city. But also it's affecting all palm plantations. We don't talk too much about how every year in Pucalpa, in the areas of the western Amazonia in Peru, all palm plantations are being burned. The idea was to put all palm plantations so you reduce fires. But that's not showing the data what we have. And also if fires became much more frequently, much more intense in the area, I don't know if this idea of protecting tracts of forest or conservation areas will be enough to reduce CO2 emissions. Right now around Pucalpa, the few protected areas that are there, I will say are now being burned. Many people have said this, but then their reaction is always to just ban the use of fire. Do you think that that's a reasonable or possibly an effective way of dealing with this problem? Everywhere you go, if you see the fire management or fire plants for controlling fires from Brazil to Colombia, the first thing is the idea of banning the uses of fires. And the ones who appear there to be the first social group to be responsible of the fires, escape fires, are small holders. And that doesn't work. You can't prohibit something that's part of the livelihood of people. A very cheap way of making you feel. And in populations that are living below the poverty line. So we have to understand the behavior of these people. And the social mobility between rural and urban, urban to rural can explain us what can we do. And in some ways we are trying to see how the governments, the local governments can establish some kind of calendars of fires, the uses of fires. Also can establish some kind of early warning systems. There is predictions of high risk of fires because drought conditions fires the governments and the media can play an important role telling people don't do or do it depends how the behavior or the weather conditions are. And do you think is there a capability to give that kind of early warning that farmers could actually use to know when it would be safe to burn some and when it would not be safe? It is. It is. You have to use more the media. We don't use too much, not just the internet but also the local radio in the Amazon. But I think it's more important than the little guy in the little village get the information at the right time so that we can influence his decision making to use fire or not. Also you have to face some reluctance from the local authorities to include fire as one of the environmental services, one of the services they have to provide. If they don't do that fire is going to keep going. It's a problem. It's going to be one of the big, big problems that will reduce any kind of development program.