Amazon Moving Towards Event Horizon When Forest Becomes Savannah - Loss Of 3-8% Of Remaining Jungle
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A year has gone by since I first reported on an urgent plea from renowned Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre and U.S. conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy, warning that the Amazon biome was teetering on its tipping point. “We stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.” they said. If the Amazon loses just 3% to 8% more of its tree cover, they wrote, it could trigger a rapidly unfolding domino effect turning more than half the towering rainforest into degraded grasslands. “We believe that negative synergies between deforestation, climate change, and widespread use of fire indicate a tipping point for the Amazon system to flip to non-forest ecosystems in eastern, southern and central Amazonia at 20-25% deforestation,” the pair wrote in a letter to Science Advances in 2018.
As a Brazilian journalist, observing the Amazon — one of Earth’s most biodiverse places, and the life source for millions of families in my nation — I’ve been hit close to home as nature’s bounty is exchanged for short-term profits from beef and soy exports. So I spent recent months during the pandemic searching for signs of hope, studying the scientific literature, looking at government actions and inaction, and most importantly, hearing from small farmers, climate experts, policy experts, and nonprofits. But in every instance, seemingly hopeful solutions dissolved like mirages; falling apart on deeper investigation, or lacking federal or state government backing, or lacking sufficient scale to address the urgent, impending tipping point, which since Nobre’s and Lovejoy’s plea, has only edged closer.
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The promise then was that by 2030, deforestation in Mato Grosso — a soy-dominated Amazon state — would plummet and forest regeneration would skyrocket, all while agricultural production and profits increased. Getting illegal deforestation to zero by 2020 was a central target. But that goal proved impossible. Last year, 88% of all deforestation in the state was illegal, according to ICV data analysis. And as the initiative failed to meet environmental targets, deforestation kept rising, reaching 1,767 square kilometers (682 square miles) in 2020, even as Mato Grosso’s agribusiness sector grow by 33%.
According to Thualt, the project struggled, then failed to access vital financial backing. “We projected that we would need 40 billion reais [$7.5 billion] in credit over 15 years for the [agricultural] production sector to make the necessary [environmental] changes. With a lot of effort, Mato Grosso was able to get 250 million reais [$38 million],” she said, adding that market actors were timid about taking risks for the environment that would not pay back in economic dividends. “It’s disappointing. When you look at the [Amazon] tipping point, we know we have to revolutionize our [agribusiness] practices and our relationship with the forest over the next three or four years. It’s hard to be positive with the scenario we’re in.”
Similar stories are told in other Amazon states. In Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, the Brazilian states of the western Amazon, the Bolsonaro-aligned state governments are pushing for the creation of a new agriculture frontier dubbed Amacro. “Deforestation for us is a synonym of progress,” Assuero Veronez, the president of the Acre Agriculture Federation, responsible for Amacro’s creation, told Brazilian environmental news agency O Eco in March 2020 in a video interview. “[Acre] has some of the best land in Brazil, but the land has one problem: it’s covered in forest.”
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https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/as-amazon-forest-to-savanna-tipping-point-looms-solutions-remain-elusive/
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