Amazon Nears Point of No Return, Warns Climate Scientist

A leading global authority on tropical ecosystems, Nobre insists that a mix of deforestation, climate change, and criminal activity is driving the world’s largest rainforest toward becoming a degraded savanna — with disastrous implications for global climate, biodiversity, and agriculture.

A Troika: Deforest, Warm, Crime
Today, 18% percent of the Amazon has been cleared. Scientific predictions are that the rainforest might start to see an irreversible decline when 20–25% of the rainforest has been deforested, or it heats up to 2.0–2.5°C above pre-industrial global temperatures. The Earth is already 1.5 degrees warmer and is on track to hit the danger zone by 2050.

Already the region is experiencing the fallout. Since 2023, record droughts have struck the Amazon forest, the dry season now lasting more than a month longer, the rainfall diminishing by 20%. In the worst impacted areas, in southern Pará and in northern Mato Grosso, dry season rainfall has fallen below 40mm a month—too low to maintain rainforests; it is suited to savannahs.

Adding to this equation is a facet of agribusiness and criminal networks. Large stretches of land have been cleared for cattle grazing and soy farming.

Instead of forests, pastures return much less water to the atmosphere, helping the regional drying along. In the meantime, arson by criminal gangs, which have caused more than 98% of 2024’s 150,000 fires, has compounded the devastation.

These groups, which include illegal loggers, land grabbers, and gold miners, traffickers of everything from wildcat timber to wildcat girls, all have a combined criminal economy of $280 billion that renders the government as its forest guardian a hollow, farcical boast.

Changing the World: Food, Climate … What Can We Change?
When (not if) the Amazon is gone it is estimated that 200-250 gigatonnes of COâ‚‚ will be released between NOW and 2050-2100, making the 1.5oC target almost impossible to achieve (beyond the climate impact, the Amazon also plays a crucial role in recycling water from the coast into rainfall to water farmland across South America).

“Flying rivers” of forest-originating water vapor bring rainfall to Brazil’s farmlands and to the countries that border it. If Amazon dies, food production in places like the Cerrado, Paraná, and even northern Argentina could ultimately plummet 40% or more.

Biodiversity would be hit hard too, and the loss of forests could also risk bringing further zoonotic diseases into human populations. There are already two outbreaks — Oropouche and Mayaro fevers — setting off alarms.

Is There Still Hope?
Nobre insists that there is still a short window. Nature-based solutions such as reforestation, stopping deforestation, and transitioning to a sustainable bioeconomy could build back resilience.

The deforestation rate in Brazil has fallen on the present Lula administration and Environment Minister Marina Silva, although the pace of progress needs to be picked up. Nobre’s challenge: get deforestation below 4,000 sq km before the COP30 summit.

Even so, while they were in dire straits, researchers like Nobre still clung to a message of hope — albeit an urgent one: “We have indeed been resilient, but this can’t continue. We have to act now — before it is too late.”