COP 30 in Belém: Is it still possible to save the Amazon?

At over 6.7 million km2, South America is more than twice the size of India and is one of the richest biodiversity hotspots on Earth.

Many of these species are found nowhere else.

Additionally, the region is home to hundreds of indigenous communities.

The Amazon River is the world’s largest river, with more than 1,100 tributaries and by far the largest freshwater resource on Earth.

This water flows into the Atlantic Ocean and plays a critical role in maintaining ocean currents that influence regional and global climate systems.

And even though some degraded areas emit more carbon than they store, forests are important carbon sinks (the name given to natural or man-made systems, such as forests, oceans, and soils, that absorb more carbon than they emit).

The destruction of vast tracts of forests has made the country a major supplier of timber.

Environmental groups say up to 20% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost and similar areas are being degraded by human activities such as agriculture, ranching, logging and mining, and now by droughts and rising temperatures due to climate change.

The latest peak in deforestation was in 2022, when about 20,000 square kilometers of forest were cleared, an increase of 21% compared to 2021, making it the worst year since 2004, according to Amazon conservation group Andean Amazon Monitoring Program (MAAP).

However, it soon became clear that parts of the Amazon were severely damaged and irreparable.

Significant increases in temperature and prolonged droughts have affected their basic functioning, making normally humid forests drier and more susceptible to wildfires.

“Drought and fire rates are increasing, leading to further environmental damage in some regions of the Amazon,” says Paulo Brando, a professor at Yale University who specializes in carbon capture in ecosystems.

“This degradation in different regions poses a major threat to the Amazon.”

The problem occurs as follows: The vast Amazon region has an internal climate system, and its forests circulate moisture from the Atlantic Ocean, creating what are known as “flying rivers” in the sky.

These atmospheric rivers first deposit rain over the eastern Amazon River near the Atlantic Ocean. The water then rises back into the air, soil, and vegetation (through the process of evapotranspiration) and travels further west before falling into other areas of the rainforest.

The circulation of water from one region of the rainforest to another occurs throughout the Amazon and partially explains how the vast rainforest has thrived.

But experts warn that this water circulation is being cut off.

Deforested and degraded Amazon regions are unable to properly circulate water from the ocean, resulting in far less water returning to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration.

The worst-affected areas are the western Amazon, furthest from the Atlantic Ocean, particularly southern Peru and northern Bolivia.

“The survival of the tropical forests of Peru and Bolivia actually depends on the intact forests of Brazil to the east, because if these forests are destroyed, the water cycle that produces the flying rivers will be disrupted, making it impossible to reach the western Amazon. It’s all interconnected.”

This problem is particularly acute during the dry season from June to November.

Tropical rainforests were once highly resistant to wildfires, but that resistance is decreasing in areas affected by lack of rainfall.

Some scientists fear that dry rainforest ecosystems are reaching a tipping point, or “point of no return,” from which they cannot recover and may be lost forever.

“These are the first signs of a tipping point that we’re seeing in some parts of the Amazon,” Feiner said.

Erika Behrenger, a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s Institute of Ecosystems, agrees the risks are increasing, but, like Feiner, says some regions are being more affected than others.

“It’s a very slow process that’s happening in certain parts,” she says.

A reduction in the water cycle over the Amazon not only means less forest health, but also has huge implications for the Amazon and its many tributaries, experts say.

Dry conditions in 2023 and the first half of 2024 were caused in part by the El Niño phenomenon. El Niño is a natural weather system that causes sea surface temperatures to rise in the eastern Pacific Ocean, influencing global rainfall patterns, particularly in South America.

As if deforestation and the climate crisis weren’t harmful enough, illegal mining, especially gold mining, is also causing untold damage to rainforest ecosystems.

“And now we’re also starting to mine rare earth minerals in this area,” Berenguer says.

These minerals are essential to the modern economy, as they are used in electric cars, wind turbines, mobile phones, and satellites.

“Criminal networks are expanding across the Amazon, making it extremely difficult for authorities to control the situation in the region,” said Matt Feiner.

The challenge of combating transnational crime is heightened by the fact that the Amazon spans eight countries, each with its own legal system and law enforcement regime.

Another possible cause for alarm is the discovery that there are large reserves of hydrocarbons beneath the Amazon.

According to InfoAmazonia, reserves equivalent to approximately 5.3 billion barrels of oil were discovered between 2022 and 2024.

The group says the region is home to nearly a fifth of the world’s recently discovered reserves, making it a new frontier for the fossil fuel industry.

Even before many of these protected areas were discovered or the latest research on flying rivers was conducted, the Amazon Scientific Commission showed that more than 10,000 species of plants and animals were at high risk of extinction due to rainforest destruction.

The Amazon continues to be a powerful carbon sink, capable of absorbing large amounts of CO2, the main gas that warms the planet.

According to the Andean Amazon Monitoring Program (MAAP) report released in 2024, it is estimated that there will be 71.5 billion tons of carbon above and below ground in 2022.

This is equivalent to almost two years of global CO2 emissions at 2022 levels.

But scientists say more areas in the region are at risk of becoming net emitters due to deforestation, where vegetation is cleared and burned, and the effects of climate change on rainforests.

Losing the Amazon would be tantamount to losing the fight against the climate crisis, they added.

Tropical forests also create cloud cover that cools the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space.

As long as this situation continues, global warming will slow down.

“Just as tropical forests like the Amazon have the ability to store carbon and reduce global warming, they also have the ability to cool the planet,” says Tasso Azevedo, a Brazilian forestry scientist and founder and coordinator of MapBiomas.

“That’s why we call the Amazon a giant air conditioner for this warming world.”

And, as mentioned above, the world’s largest freshwater basin has a major impact on the Earth’s climate.

Scientists say dumping large quantities of freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean helps determine ocean currents, and changes in that dumping will affect both ocean currents and the regional and global weather patterns they shape.