Amazon rainforest UPSC: Relevance
- GS 3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.
Amazon rainforest: Context
- According to a new study, above 75% of the Amazon rainforest is heading towards a tipping point since the 2000s.
Amazon rainforest near tipping point: Key points
- Using the satellite data, researchers found that the forest might be losing its ability to bounce back from extreme events such as drought or fire, threatening to become a dry savanna-like ecosystem.
- The transition could have a negative impact on the forest as it could alter its rich biodiversity, carbon-storing potential and global climate change.
- The study showed that the indicators of tipping points go up faster in areas with less rainfall and closer to human land use.
Amazon rainforest importance
- The Amazon’s rainforest has around 30 per cent of the world’s species, comprising 40,000 plant species, 16,000 tree species, 1,300 birds and more than 430 species of mammals.
- Trees of amazon take up water through the roots, release it into the atmosphere, and influence precipitation over whole of South America.
- The rainforest is also a carbon sink and thus plays an essential role in combating climate change.
Amazon rainforest: Present situation
- Deforestation: According to reports, deforestation totalled 430 square kilometres in January 2022, five times higher than the same month last year.
- This loss of trees will significantly impact the rainfall in the continent.
- Increasing temperatures: Increasing temperatures due to human-induced climate change is pushing the rainforest to transform into a carbon source, from the carbon sink.
- The researchers were of the view that the forests could release vast amounts of CO2 if they partially transform into dry habitats.
- Human land-use activities: Practices like direct removal of trees, construction of roads, and fires are on the rise since 2010, which is also worsening the situation.
Amazon rainforest deforestation effects
- Scientists warn that decades of human activity and a changing climate has brought the jungle near a “tipping point.”
- Experts also warn that the water cycle will soon become irreversibly broken, locking in a trend of declining rainfall and longer dry seasons that began decades ago.
- At least half of the shrinking forest will give way to savanna.
- With as much as 17% of the forest lost already, scientists believe that the tipping point will be reached at 20% to 25% of deforestation even if climate change is tamed.
- If global temperatures rise by 4°C, much of the central, eastern and southern Amazon will certainly become barren scrubland.
- If things continue as they are now, the Amazon might not exist at all within a few generations, with dire consequences for all life on earth.
- If the Amazon is destroyed, it will be impossible to control global warming.
Amazon rainforest deforestation: Way forward
- Reducing deforestation and limiting the global greenhouse gases will protect the forest’s threatened parts and boost Amazon rainforest resilience.
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