Global warming 'will destroy Amazon'

China Daily/Agency
2007-12-07

The impact of climate change plus deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 percent of the Amazon forest by 2030 - making it impossible to keep global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels, an environmental group said yesterday.

"The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed," said Daniel Nepstad, author of a new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released at a UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature, but also such a large source of fresh water 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."

Sprawling over 4.1 million sq km, the Amazon covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil. Largely unexplored, it contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water and about 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species - many still undiscovered.

The WWF said logging, livestock expansion and worsening drought are projected to rise in the coming years and could result in the clearing of 55 percent of the rain forest. If rainfall declines by 10 percent in the Amazon, as predicted, another 4 percent could be wiped out.

Scientists say if global temperatures rise more than 2 C above preindustrial levels, the risks to the environment and to people will be enormous. It is essentially the "tipping point" for catastrophic floods and droughts, rising sea levels and heatwave deaths and diseases.

"It will be very difficult to keep the temperatures at 2 C if we don't conserve the Amazon," said Nepstad, who is also a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.

According to the WWF, deforestation in the Amazon could release 55.5 billion to 96.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, representing as much as two years of global carbon emissions.

Earl Saxon, a climate change expert with the World Conservation Union, said the report was consistent with "all the best science" on the issue and recognizes there are "opportunities the delegation in Bali can take to protect the Amazon basin."

However, Milton Nogueira, a Brazilian government consultant on climate change who is also part of his country's Bali delegation, said such predictions on the Amazon's future should be taken lightly given its "size and complexity."

"It is such a big, complex system that no one can predict what will happen," he said. "It is like you are looking at a blond and blue-eyed boy and saying he will be an Olympic champion."

In its report, the WWF said saving the Amazon requires a shift to sustainable logging practices, implementation of land use polices that are already on the books in the country, and provision of money to developing countries including Brazil to reduce deforestation.

"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 with WWF-Brazil. "Our success in protecting the Amazon depends on how fast rich countries reduce their climate-damaging emissions to slow down global warming."

Source: China Daily/Agencies