The Amazon will reach tipping point if current trend of deforestation continues
by Yvette Sierra Praeli on 3 October 2022 | Translated by Hayley Smith
Across the entire 847 million hectares of Amazonian territory, some 26% of its forests are showing evidence of deforestation and degradation — 20% have suffered irreversible loss and 6% are highly degraded. The tipping point for the Amazon is no longer a distant scenario, but a present reality in some parts of the region. Of the nine countries that make up the Amazon basin, Brazil and Bolivia have the largest amounts of destruction and, as a result, “savannization is already taking place in both countries.”
This is the claim made in the study Amazon Against the Clock: A Regional Assessment on Where and How to Protect 80% by 2025, published by the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG). Written together with the Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and Stand.earth, the report was presented at the V Amazon Summit of Indigenous Peoples held in Lima, Peru.
José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, COICA General Coordinator, at the opening of the V Amazon Summit of Indigenous Peoples. Photo by COICA.
The study shows that Brazil and Bolivia account for 90% of the transformation and high degradation affecting the Amazon basin. The remaining 10% is shared by Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, with increasingly worrying amounts of forest loss.
The tipping point, according to studies by Thomas E. Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre, is said to occur when deforestation and degradation combined exceed the threshold of between 20% and 25%, a figure that refers to the eastern, southern and central Amazon.
More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/10/the-amazon-will-reach-tipping-point-if-current-trend-of-deforestation-continues/
= new reply since forum marked as read
