Smoke rises from an illegally lit fire in Amazon rainforest reserve, south of Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
Stewardship has rights and responsibilities, and we expect better both from and for Brazil in their stewardship of the Amazon region. For our part, among other things, we can all avoid purchasing products that result from this deforestation:
Brazilian Amazon released more carbon than it absorbed over past 10 years
International team of researchers also found that deforestation rose nearly four-fold in 2019
A fallen tree lies in an area of the Amazon jungle that was cleared by loggers and farmers near Porto Velho, Rondonia State. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed, according to a startling report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world’s largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution.
From 2010 through 2019, Brazil’s Amazon basin gave off 16.6bn tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9bn tonnes, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study looked at the volume of CO2 absorbed and stored as the forest grows, against the amounts released back into the atmosphere as it has been burned down or destroyed.
“We half-expected it, but it is the first time that we have figures showing that the Brazilian Amazon has flipped, and is now a net emitter,” said co-author Jean-Pierre Wigneron, a scientist at France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA).
“We don’t know at what point the changeover could become irreversible,” he told AFP in an interview.
The study also showed that deforestation – through fires and clear-cutting – increased nearly four-fold in 2019 compared with either of the two previous years, from about 1m hectares (2.5m acres) to 3.9m hectares (9.6m acres).
“Brazil saw a sharp decline in the application of environmental protection policies after the change of government in 2019,” the INRA said in a statement…
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