RIO DE JANEIRO: The Amazon rainforest´s carbon emissions doubled in 2019 and 2020, as a decline in environmental policing under Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro led to a surge in destruction of the increasingly fragile region, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The world´s biggest rainforest is a vital buffer against climate change, but studies show it has started emitting more carbon than it absorbs, pushed to a dangerous “tipping point” by deforestation and fires -- mainly for cattle ranching and farming.
Using air samples from research flights over the rainforest, scientists found the Amazon´s carbon emissions soared from 240 million tonnes per year on average from 2010 to 2018 to 440 million tonnes in 2019 and 520 million tonnes in 2020.
The study, was led by researchers at Brazil´s space agency, INPE, who were among the first to detect that the Amazon had flipped from a net absorber to a net emitter of carbon, despite its hundreds of billions of carbon-absorbing trees.
The new study noted that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon -- about 60 percent of the entire rainforest, which spans eight South American countries -- increased by 80 percent in 2019-2020, compared to the 2010-2018 average.
By AFP