The Amazon, sometimes called the “lungs of the planet,” this year showed signs of further growth toward a very frightening tipping point, threatening the very existence of the world’s largest rainforest.
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 worsened by climate change, according to the World Economic Forum. “The number of wildfires reached a 14-year high this September,” the group reported in October.
The drought has also affected the Amazon River, causing one of the river’s main tributaries to drop to its lowest level ever recorded, according to October reports from Associated Press. The decline of the river has negatively affected local economies and food supplies.
Andrew Miller, director of advocacy at Amazon Watch, said AP Last week that fires and droughts experienced across the Amazon by 2024 “may be ominous indicators that we are reaching a long-overdue 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 transports 20% of the earth’s fresh water to the sea.
According to the World Economic Forum, if the Amazon’s tipping point is reached, it “will release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere through fires and dying plants. This would further exacerbate climate change and make it impossible to reach the 1.5°C target.” It would also change weather patterns, which would affect agricultural productivity and global food supplies.
A paper published in the journal Nature in February shows that up to half of tropical forests could hit a tipping point by mid-century. “We estimate that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazon forests will be exposed to complex disturbances that could cause abrupt ecosystem transitions and potentially exacerbate regional climate change,” the researchers behind the paper explained.
However, it wasn’t all bad news from Amazon in 2024. According to APThe amount of deforestation in Brazil and Colombia fell this year. In Brazil, which hosts most of the Amazon, forest loss fell by 30.6% compared to a year earlier, bringing it to the lowest level of destruction in nearly a decade.
The improvement is a reversal from a few years ago, when the country recorded a 15-year high in deforestation during the leadership of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil is now led by left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who – despite presiding over this decline in deforestation – is also under scrutiny, as APnoted, by the environmentalist for supporting projects that they argue could damage the environment.
