More than half of Amazon forest could be gone by 2030, WWF warns

Dec 6, 2007, 11:41 GMT

Bali Island, Indonesia - A vicious loop of climate change and deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 per cent of the Amazon forest by 2030, according to a report released Thursday by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

For the next 23 years, deforestation in the Amazon could release 55.5 billion to 96.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the WWF said. The higher figure is more than two years of current global greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, the destruction of the Amazon would also do away with one of the key stabilizers of the global climate system, the global conservation group said.

The Amazon, home to more than half the world's rainforest, acts as an important 'lung' for the planet. Its trees absorb carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and emit oxygen, but logging and slash-and-burn methods to clear land for farming and livestock release the trees' stored carbon into the atmosphere.

Its report said that if current trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging continue, 55 per cent of the Amazon forests could be gone or severely damaged by 2030. Another 4 per cent would be damaged if, as scientists predict, global warming causes rainfall to decrease 10 per cent.

However, the WWF said a better estimate of rainfall reductions in the region would be more than 20 per cent over the next 50 years, particularly in the eastern Amazon, causing even more damage to the Amazon. It predicted temperatures there could rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius in that time and perhaps hike as much as 8 degrees.

'The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed,' said Dan Nepstad, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts and author of the report.

'It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but also such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that, it's a massive store of carbon,' he said.

The WWF warned not only of dramatic consequences for the Amazon and the livelihoods of people in South America but also for the world's climate.

With further destruction of the Amazon forests, less rainfall was anticipated in India, Central America and during the growing season in the grain belts of the United States and Brazil, Nepstad said.

Among strategies to halt deforestation in the Amazon include minimizing the negative impacts of cattle ranching and infrastructure projects, such as roads, and rapidly expanding protected areas, the WWF recommended.

'We can still stop the destruction of the Amazon, but we need the support of the rich countries,' said Karen Suassuna, a climate change analyst at WWF-Brazil. 'Our success in protecting the Amazon depends on how fast rich countries reduce their climate-damaging emissions to slow down global warming.'

The report was released as delegates, scientists and environmentalists from nearly 190 countries gathered in Bali for two weeks of meetings with an aim to set a deadline for replacing the Kyoto Protocol, the emissions-cutting treaty signed 10 years ago, which expires in 2012.

'The Kyoto-plus climate agreement must include measures to reduce emissions from forests,' said Hans Verolme, director of the WWF's climate change programme.

'A failure to protect the Amazon forest will not only be a disaster for millions of people who live in the Amazon region but also for the stability of the world's climate,' he warned.