Preventing the Amazon from reaching a tipping point

As the UN climate change conference COP30 comes to the Amazon, forests will be a central topic of the 12-day event in Belém. The largest rainforest in the world “is under siege like never before,” warns the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The main threats include unchecked agricultural expansion, illegal mining and logging, wildfires and the impacts of climate change, according to the non-profit organization Amazon Conservation. 

The Amazon rainforest, often called “the lungs of the Earth”, is so big that it makes its own climate: Its billions of trees produce enough moisture to form clouds, which provide at least a third of the forest’s life-sustaining rainfall. But climate change is disrupting this circular process. The build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has raised regional temperatures, worsened droughts and increased the risk of fires. 

Fewer trees mean less rainfall, higher temperatures and yet more fires. Climate change induced deforestation therefore risks becoming self-perpetuating. Much of the rainforest will turn into a dry savannah, and the tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide stored there will be released into the atmosphere, further heating the planet. 

Talks at COP30 will focus on how to stop, if not reverse a worrying trend: An estimated 17 percent of Amazonian forest cover has been lost and a further 17 percent degraded. Experts believe that the “tipping point” teeters around 20-25 percent. That’s the threshold beyond which self-sustaining processes irreversibly push a part of the Earth’s climate system from one state into another. 

This grim scenario dubbed “Amazon dieback” is one of the nine “tipping points” identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The “dieback” is among the most urgent as the Amazon rainforest is not only critical for the world’s climate thanks to its capacity for carbon capture, but also as a huge treasure trove of biodiversity: Despite covering only around 1 percent of the Earth’s surface, the Amazon rainforest is home to 10 percent of all known wildlife. 

In recent years, the centrality of the role of forests in the planet’s global temperature regulation system has come into the spotlight with the incorporation of the REDD+ mechanism under the umbrella of nature-based solutions. REDD+ stands for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”, the “plus” signifies further measures such as conservation, sustainable forest management and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks. 

These include the biological capture and sequestration of carbon, carried out through the photosynthesis of trees, in schemes that create financial incentives and rewards. For example, the state-owned Brazilian Development Bank (NBESD) plans to finance the restoration of 6 million hectares in the Amazon by 2030 and a further 18 million hectares by 2050 – hoping to attract substantial investments from the private sector and capital markets, which are interested in carbon credits. 

On the eve of COP30 the two Brazilian researchers Beto Veríssimo and Juliano J. Assunção published a paper calling for an entirely new viewpoint: “Brazil is uniquely positioned to help change how tropical forests are treated in global climate efforts: not merely as victims of deforestation and carbon emissions, but as vital assets in the fight against climate change.” 

To reach an effective climate solution, they argue, two major actions are essential: First, a drastic worldwide reduction of new emissions and continuation of the path toward net zero by 2050. Second, even if emissions are brought down to almost zero (they are rising at the moment!) massive amounts of carbon must still be removed from the atmosphere. 

Belém, the authors write, is a “golden opportunity” to address these challenges by reforestation and regeneration: “Unlike expensive and unproven carbon-capture technologies, forest regeneration is affordable, scalable, and ready to deploy today. Focusing on forest restoration also brings other benefits: protecting biodiversity, conserving water, and supporting healthy ecosystem services,” they say. 

Seeing rainforests as assets will create the window to design a financial model that will reward regions for growing new forests and removing carbon, and another to reward the protection of standing forests. In the Brazilian Amazon, where much deforestation is driven by low-yield cattle grazing, even modest payments for carbon could be transformative. The region could shift from being a major carbon emitter back to being a major carbon sink, removing as much as 18 gigatonnes of carbon over 30 years. 

Meanwhile, the proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) would offer annual payments to countries for each hectare of preserved forest. The proposal suggests US$4 per hectare per year, with steep penalties for any deforestation - a system that effectively pays countries to keep forests standing. Though not tied to carbon credits, the logic is simple: Reward stewardship and penalize forest loss. 

This approach treats forests like infrastructure, worthy of maintenance funding, just like roads or power grids. Veríssimo and Assunção state: “Tropical forests can be central to solving the climate crisis. Their protection and restoration can also bring economic benefits.”