Nov 2022
Risking The Amazon
Why We Need Immediate Action to Reduce the Tipping Point Risk. Technical Briefing.
This technical note has been produced, by WWF UK, in collaboration with WWF Brazil and the WWF Amazon Coordination Unit, with the aim of bringing together the widespread evidence that we are facing a critical risk of abrupt vegetation change (a ‘tipping point’) in the Amazon biome. We bring together some of the many lines of evidence for the tipping point risk and discuss what reaching it would mean for the biome, the people of Amazonia, its globally unique biodiversity, and the balance of our earth
Early warning indicators show that one third of the Amazon biome (34%) has already experienced at least one of the theoretical climate or forest loss tipping point thresholds, in the last ten years. This equates to an area of 2.4 million km2, approximately one quarter the size of Europe.