Representative image of wildfires.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Bogota: Colombia's President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday he will declare that wildfires burning in the country are a natural disaster, freeing up funds to fight the blazes amid soaring temperatures and the El Nino weather phenomenon.
Colombia has put out some 204 fires this month - around eight per day - and 25 fires continued to burn, according to a report from the Environment Ministry and the disaster agency.
Almost half of the 2 trillion-peso budget ($508 million) for addressing issues caused by El Nino, like fighting fires, has already been spent, the report said.
Declaring a natural disaster "means some budget items can be moved to other areas to address problems that arise, such as transferring resources so that helicopters can be put into action to put out the fires", Petro told journalists in Colombia's Cauca province.
Smoke billowed from a wooded, mountainous area east of capital Bogota on Wednesday afternoon as helicopters ferried water to fight the blaze.
Colombia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, is seeing the effects of its typical dry season combine with strong El Nino weather, which typically produces hotter and drier weather.
Some 952 Colombian municipalities were on alert on Wednesday due to the threat of fires, more than half of which were at red alert, the Environment Ministry said.
Earlier this month, Colombia's Environment Minister Susana Muhamad warned the country was at grave risk of forest fires that could worsen deforestation.
Climate change has been blamed for driving a record drought that has hit all nine countries in the Amazon basin - including Colombia - according to a study on Wednesday which found global warming made the drought 30 times more likely.
The drought is expected to worsen this year, scientists told Reuters in 2023.