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deforestation
Humanity's Chance to Reverse Amazon's Slide Toward Tipping Point Is 'Shrinking'
The world's largest rainforest showed "ominous indicators," including wildfires and extreme drought, in 2024.
Dec 31, 2024
The Amazon, sometimes called the "lungs of the planet," this year showed signs of further inching toward a much-feared tipping point, threatening the very existence of the world's largest rainforest.
Rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaged large parts of the Amazon in 2024. The fires and dry conditions were fueled by deforestation and the El Niño weather pattern, and also made worse by climate change, according to the World Economic Forum. "The number of fires reached its highest level in 14 years this September," the group reported in October.
Drought has also impacted the Amazon River, causing one of the river's main tributaries to drop to its lowest level ever recorded, according to October reporting from The Associated Press. The drop in the river has negatively impacted local economies and food supplies.
Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, told the AP last week that the fires and droughts experienced across the Amazon in 2024 "could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point."
"Humanity's window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but still open," he said.
The Amazon plays a vital role in keeping the planet healthy. 150-200 billion tons of carbon are stored in the Amazon, and it also carries 20% of the earth's fresh water to sea.
According to the World Economic Forum, if the Amazon tipping point is reached, "it will release billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere through fires and plants dying off. This would further exacerbate climate change and make the 1.5°C goal impossible to achieve. It would also alter weather patterns, which would impact agricultural productivity and global food supplies."
A paper published in the journal Nature in February indicates that up to half of the rainforest could hit a tipping point by the middle of the century. "We estimate that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazonian forests will be exposed to compounding disturbances that may trigger unexpected ecosystem transitions and potentially exacerbate regional climate change," explained the researchers behind the paper.
However, it wasn't all bad news out of the Amazon in 2024. According to the AP, the amount of deforestation in Brazil and Colombia declined in this year. In Brazil, which houses the largest chunk of the Amazon, forest loss dropped 30.6% compared to the year prior, bringing it to the lowest level of destruction in nearly a decade.
The improvement is an about-face from a couple of years ago, when the country registered 15-year high of deforestation during the leadership of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil is now led by the left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who—despite presiding over this drop in deforestation—has also come under scrutiny, as APnoted, by environmentalist for backing projects that they argue could harm the environment.
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'Frightening': Over 1 in 3 of World's Tree Species Face Extinction
"Trees directly underpin the survival of a staggering array of species—including us," said one scientist.
Oct 29, 2024
More than one-third of Earth's tree species are at risk of extinction, with logging, forest destruction for agriculture and urban development, and human-caused global heating most responsible for this "frightening" development that threatens life as we know it, according to a report published Monday.
The 2024 Global Tree Assessment—released at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia and published as part of this year's International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) "Red List" of threatened species—warns that more than 16,000 of the 47,000 tree species analyzed in the report are at risk of extinction.
The report blames deforestation and catastrophic global heating, caused by human burning of fossil fuels, as the main drivers of tree extinction. More than 5,000 tree species on the IUCN Red List are felled for construction timber, while 2,000 species are used for fuel, food, and medicines.
According to the report:
Trees now account for over one-quarter of species on the IUCN Red List, and the number of threatened trees is more than double the number of all threatened birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians combined. Tree species are at risk of extinction in 192 countries around the world...
The highest proportion of threatened trees is found on islands. Island trees are at particularly high risk due to deforestation for urban development and agriculture at all scales, as well as invasive species, pests, and diseases. Climate change is increasingly threatening trees, especially in the tropics, through sea-level rise and stronger, more frequent storms.
"Trees are essential to support life on Earth through their vital role in ecosystems, and millions of people depend upon them for their lives and livelihoods," IUCN director-general Grethel Aguilar said in a statement. "As the IUCN Red List celebrates 60 years of impact, this assessment highlights its importance as a barometer of life, but also, crucially, as a unique tool guiding action to reverse the decline of nature."
Climate, environmental, and biodiversity defenders pointed to the new report with alarm.
"The significance of the Global Tree Assessment cannot be overstated, given the importance of trees to ecosystems and people," said Eimear Nic Lughadha, senior research leader in conservation assessment and analysis at the U.K. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. "We hope this frightening statistic of 1 in 3 trees facing extinction will incentivize urgent action and be used to inform conservation plans."
Fran Price, the Worldwide Fund for Nature's forest practice lead, said in a statement that "IUCN's Global Tree Assessment paints a shocking picture of the state of the world's trees."
"Trees are invaluable allies in tackling climate change and a critical foundation of our natural world," Price added. "The report is an eye-opening reminder that current efforts are falling short in safeguarding these vital natural assets. It's time to take stronger action against illegal logging and trade and enact stronger laws that protect our trees."
David Hole, an IUCN-U.S. board member and Conservation International scientist, asserted that "trees directly underpin the survival of a staggering array of species—including us."
"This latest IUCN update is flashing a warning light that those green giants need more of our attention and support the world over," he continued. "Thriving, naturally diverse forests are essential in mitigating both climate change and biodiversity loss. Not only do they store more carbon, they are also more resilient to natural and human-driven threats."
"We know what we have to do," Hole added. "We need to provide real and effective protection for tree species across the globe—particularly those that are imminently threatened. And we must do that in ways that support local people and communities, and doesn't cut them off from what is often a critical resource."
There is hope: Besides cutting carbon emissions and combating deforestation, Hole pointed to the "enormous untapped potential" of restoring native trees in previously degraded agricultural lands.
"Not only could we store more carbon, we could also enhance food security, support biodiversity, and increase agricultural systems' resilience to the myriad pressures that climate change is increasingly placing them under," he said. "These are the types of innovative approaches that can make a big positive difference—and it is vital we start implementing them at scale."
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We Know What’s Behind Biodiversity Loss—It’s Time to Actually Tackle It
To halt global biodiversity loss in an equitable and gender-responsive manner, countries must stop subsidizing export-oriented economic sectors.
Oct 24, 2024
As global leaders converge in Colombia for the COP16 global biodiversity summit this week, they face a stark reality: Despite over a decade of pledges to protect biodiversity, not a single global target has been fully achieved.
Forests continue to burn, habitats are vanishing, and biodiversity is spiraling toward collapse. Without addressing the systemic drivers of environmental destruction—especially in the Global South—this failure will persist.
The last biodiversity summit (COP15) saw the adoption of decisions on instruments to reduce inequalities, ensure a gender-responsive approach to biodiversity action, take a human rights-based approach, and guarantee access to justice and participation in decision-making by communities. These points are found in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity’s Gender Plan of Action and the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Targets 22 and 23 and Section C on implementation.
The economic model that Global South countries are forced to pursue by the international financial institutions, based on natural resource extraction with highly unequal distribution of benefits and impacts, is driving extinction and global biodiversity loss.
In Cali, countries will take stock of the targets and commitments adopted so far. This meeting is a crucial opportunity to assess how well the 196 signatories of the convention—sadly, the United States is not one of them—have tackled biodiversity loss so far. And because the crisis we face is so urgent, it’s also a moment in which we must look toward the leadership of women, who play key roles in local agricultural production, family and local economies, and stewardship of biodiversity in key areas like the Amazon.
Picture women like Lucy Mulenkei, a Masai woman who has championed the interests of marginalized pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities throughout Africa. Or Patricia Gualinga, who has led her Kichwa community in the Amazon in keeping oil drilling off their land and proposing a “living forest” model for rights-based conservation. And Xananine Calvillo, a young woman from Mexico who recently called on the World Bank to stop loaning money to factory farming companies that destroy forests and rivers in sensitive ecosystems.
Our governments and institutions have failed in the past, but they have a chance to listen to women leaders this week. It’s urgent that they do this, and start putting their money where their mouth is, ending subsidies for harmful industries that are behind biodiversity loss.
Why Past Plans on Biodiversity Failed
The strategy agreed in 2010 to guide global action during the U.N. Decade on Biodiversity (2011-2020) recognized the need to address the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. The failure to tackle these root causes is one of the reasons cited in the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook as to why we didn’t meet the first global biodiversity target in 2010.
Building on this analysis, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 structured the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets around five Strategic Goals, setting benchmarks for progress through relevant policies and enabling conditions.
However, at the global level, none of the 20 Aichi Targets were fully achieved.
Target 4 on sustainable production and consumption was deemed not achieved with “high confidence,” which means that actions to reduce the ecological footprint failed after a decade of commitment. Between 2011 and 2016, the ecological footprint remained at approximately 1.7 times the level of biocapacity—in other words, requiring “1.7 Earths” to regenerate the biological resources used by our societies.
The rate of loss of all natural habitats including forests, which is considered in Aichi Target 5, is not lower than that of previous decades, with South America surpassing a record for forest fires this year, with 433,000 fire hotspots and over 14.4 million hectares of forest cover burned or affected in different biomes of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru. Brazil and Bolivia alone have seen their forest devastated by 7 million hectares each, while the Amazon river basin is reporting the lowest levels on record amid a severe drought driven by climate change.
What’s Behind Biodiversity Loss
Governments continue to provide billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and other perverse incentives to support deforestation, water pollution, and fossil fuel consumption which directly work against the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.
By some measures, countries spend at least $2.6 trillion a year on propping up polluting industries, which is equal to 2.5% of global GDP. And the wealthiest nations claim there isn’t enough money to help Global South countries respond to the crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
The failure to tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, including fossil fuel extraction, mining, industrial agriculture, intensive livestock farming, large-scale infrastructure projects, and monoculture tree plantations— estimated to drive up to 90% of biodiversity loss—are partly linked to the contradictions within the Global Biodiversity Framework. Biodiversity offsets and other market-based schemes considered in Target 19(d) undermine Goal C of the framework, which is to protect the integrity, connectivity, and resilience of all ecosystems.
Forest fires continue to rage in the Amazon, and there’s no time to let companies swoop in with false solutions to the problem.
Letting the market have its way with biodiversity policy is not the way to achieve biodiversity protection, either. So-called biodiversity investment projects have increasingly been exposed for human rights violations, social and gender impacts, conceptual flaws like inattention to ecosystem integrity, and problems with compliance and effectiveness.
The economic model that Global South countries are forced to pursue by the international financial institutions, based on natural resource extraction with highly unequal distribution of benefits and impacts, is driving extinction and global biodiversity loss. That’s why, if we really want to enable urgent and transformative action, government support for export-oriented economic sectors, subsidies, preferential tax subsidies, and diluting environmental regulations must end immediately.
Here’s What Should Happen at COP16
The biodiversity summit this week in Colombia presents us with an opportunity to reaffirm our collective commitment to forest and biodiversity conservation.
Women in all their diversity, Indigenous peoples and local communities, Afro-descendants, peasants, youth, and grassroots movements must be central in shaping the policies that will guide our future. Governments must prioritize people and the planet over corporate profit in a way that is just and equitable, gender-responsive, rights-based, and rooted in a non-market-based approach led by real, community-led solutions.
Transformative change necessarily demands challenging the international financial and monetary systems that force Global South governments to maintain and expand extractive activities and perpetuate the destruction of nature, as well as gender and social inequalities.
As global leaders gather in Cali to review the state of implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework and show the alignment of their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans with the Framework, it is crucial that we critically examine the level of biodiversity commitments and address the structural drivers of biodiversity loss.
If we ignore those structural drivers, the harmful activities that are the same ones countries have been propping up with subsidies and favorable terms, there’s no way to halt the biodiversity crisis. Forest fires continue to rage in the Amazon, and there’s no time to let companies swoop in with false solutions to the problem. Transformative change is what is needed, and women like Xananine, Lucy, and Patricia will be there at COP16 with real solutions in their hands.
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