Amazon on the brink

Continued large scale deforestation and the worsening impacts of the climate crisis are pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point that could change the face of the planet.

The Amazon rainforest is home to around 10% of all known species on Earth – and countless others that haven’t even discovered yet. It stores around 250-300 billion tonnes of carbon – equivalent to 15-20 years of global greenhouse gas emissions – and generates the rainfall that supports some of the world’s biggest cities and most important agricultural areas. The Amazon is also home to over 47 million people, including 2.2 million Indigenous and traditional inhabitants whose cultures are deeply interwoven with the rainforest.

Around one-sixth of the original forest area has been deforested, mainly to make way for cattle ranching and agriculture, and a similar area has been degraded by logging, infrastructure and mining, fires and other human pressures. 

That still leaves vast intact landscapes where nature continues to thrive and where Indigenous peoples live sustainably through the forest’s resources. But for how much longer?

Scientists fear that, as the combined impacts of deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate change multiply, the Amazon could reach a tipping point that will change it forever.

The Amazon domino effect

As the name suggests, rain is a critical component of a rainforest. Transpiration – water vapour released from the surface of plants – recharges the clouds and creates the rainfall that sustains the life of the Amazon. But deforestation and forest degradation mean less transpiration, which means less rainfall. 

This creates a domino effect. As rainfall is reduced, trees become distressed and transpire less, further reducing water availability. As conditions become drier, more trees die and the forest is more susceptible to fire. Transpiration and rainfall are reduced further… and so on in a vicious circle.

Eventually, environmental conditions across much of the Amazon biome would become unsuitable for tropical forest. The impacts would be devastating. Rainforest biodiversity would be lost forever. Communities would be displaced and cultural heritage destroyed. Weather patterns would change across South America, undermining agricultural productivity and global food supplies. 

A change of this magnitude would also accelerate global climate change, as the Amazon would shift from being a carbon sink to a source of emissions through fires and plants dying off. Up to 75 billion tonnes of carbon could be released into the atmosphere, making it impossible to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Are we close to an Amazon tipping point? Several studies suggest a tipping point could be on the horizon if just 20–25% of the Amazon rainforest were destroyed – a figure that is dangerously close. The beginning of 2024 has already brought more record-breaking fires, even in the rainy season: more than 12,000km2 of rainforest burned in the Brazilian Amazon between January and April, unprecedented for the time of year. By 2050, up to 47% of the Amazon biome will likely be exposed to simultaneous disturbances including warming temperatures, extreme droughts, deforestation and fires.


What WWF is doing

The stakes couldn’t be higher – we have to act now to protect the Amazon from catastrophic and irreversible damage.

At WWF, we’re working on many fronts to help secure the Amazon’s future. In Brazil in 2002, we helped launch the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) programme – the world’s largest tropical forest conservation initiative. ARPA has created 27 million hectares of new protected areas, and improved the management of millions more. To ensure the programme’s long-term sustainability, we helped secure US$215 million in funding which will pay for the management of protected areas over a 25-year period – and we’ve since developed similar initiatives in Peru and Colombia. 

In addition to formally protected areas, protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and their territories is critical to the future of the Amazon. Almost half of the large wilderness areas in the Amazon are in Indigenous territories, and Indigenous and traditional communities’ territories tend to have lower deforestation rates and greater biodiversity than other forest areas, including other protected areas. 

While Indigenous peoples have generations of traditional knowledge of sustainable forest management, we’ve also partnered with them to use the latest technology to defend their territories. In Rondônia in Brazil, for example, we’re supporting a number of Indigenous associations to use drones, smartphones and satellites to monitor 22 territories covering an area of 6.4 million hectares. This provides an early warning of threats to their forests, like illegal logging, mining, land grabbing and fires, as well as evidence that can be used to take legal action, campaign for policy changes and raise awareness.

We are also collaborating with partners across the Amazon to manage and prevent fires, which have increased in intensity and frequency. In Bolivia, WWF has provided drones and other equipment to Indigenous groups on the frontlines of fighting fires and in Brazil, we are working on smart fire management in protected and conserved areas.

As well as our work on the ground, we’re active at a global level to address the threats to the Amazon – from working with businesses and their financial backers to ensure their products don’t contribute to deforestation, to pressing governments to strengthen their commitments and finance for tackling climate change and protecting forests. 

The fate of the Amazon affects all of us – we all need to be part of the solution.