11 December 2021 | New Scientist | 45such as cacao under the canopy of a secondary
forest – one that has regrown after tree loss.
That has the added advantage of benefiting
the locals, including Indigenous people, rather
than multinational agribusiness companies.
“Most of the profits from the existing Amazon
economy leaves the Amazon,” says Nobre.
The ranchers, soya bean farmers and even
Brazil’s deforestation-denying president
Jair Bolsonaro seem to be waking up to the
situation. Beef and soya farmers, who Nobre
says are collectively responsible for 90 per cent
of Amazon deforestation, have already noticed
that disrupting the hydrological cycle isn’t a
sensible long-term strategy. “Agribusiness is
already starting to have big economic problems
with reduction in precipitation and drought,”
says Gatti.
The big companies are also responding to
international pressure, says Brando. Many
have spent years building the trust of buyers
and the confidence of consumers and don’t
want their reputations trashed along with the
forest. At COP26 in November, Brazil signed the
Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and
Land Use, which commits signatories to end
deforestation by 2030. “We are happy that
Brazil signed the forest pledge,” says Ane
Alencar, science director at IPAM Amazonia
in Brasilia. “I want to believe, but we want to
see more concrete steps, we want to see a very
detailed plan. We need to demonstrate as a
country that we can reduce deforestation.”
Brazil already appears to be backtracking on
its pledge by claiming, erroneously, that it only
applies to illegal deforestation, says Alencar.
And even if Brazil does end deforestation by
2030 the forest is so degraded in places that it
will continue to emit CO 2 for many years, says
Paulo Netto at the University of Sao Paulo.
From scientists and activists alike, the message
comes across loud and clear: the Amazon is in
serious trouble and accelerating towards the
brink, but where there is life there is hope.
“We cannot be the prophets of doom. We have
a moral obligation to remain optimistic and to
try to do something,” says Nasi. “The future is
not written, the future is what we do.” ❚“They have an amazing ability to bounce back.”
Similar efforts to regenerate Brazil’s Atlantic
Forest – which is separate from the Amazon –
are proving unexpectedly successful. Regrown
forest isn’t quite as biologically rich as virgin
rainforest, but it can still hold 70 to 80 per
cent of the carbon and 65 per cent of the
biodiversity of a primary forest, says Nobre.
Another minimum requirement is law
enforcement, says Bustamante. “Amazon
countries have good environmental laws
but they need to enforce them.” Brazilian law
allows no more than 20 per cent deforestation
of a given area, says Gatti, but as her research
has found, this is routinely flouted. About 10
per cent of deforestation is illegal, often aided
and abetted by corrupt regional politicians,
says Rodrigo Botero García at the Foundation
for Conservation and Sustainable
Development in Colombia.
If the situation is stabilised, next comes
the long, hard slog of building a new Amazon
economy based on agroforestry, which means
rearing livestock and growing high-value cropsGraham Lawton is a staff writer at
New Scientist and author of This
Book Could Save Your Life. You can
follow him @grahamlawtonwetlands. It isn’t clear what would happen to
this under savannisation, but it is reasonable
to assume that levels would fall.
Window of opportunity
Even if we are approaching a tipping point,
it isn’t too late. “There is a narrow window
of opportunity to change this trajectory. But
action must be exponential,” says Mercedes
Bustamante at the University of Brasilia, who
is a member of the SPA.
Many other scientists express similar
sentiments. But if the worst is to be avoided,
the rescue plan must be swift and decisive. The
absolute priority is to restore the hydrological
cycle, says Lovejoy, by stopping further
degradation and replanting trees.
The minimum requirement for that is an
immediate halt to deforestation, says Nobre,
followed by a huge reforestation effort. In
some places, that means tree planting, in
others passive rewilding. “When forests are
degraded, they are not gone,” says Brando.
Cattle ranching (above)
and soya plantations
(below) are drivers of
deforestation
in the AmazonPA
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