If we’re going to keep Global Warming to under 1.5° Celsius, we need to cut emissions by half before 2030. If we mean to prevent the extinction of literally millions of species in our lifetime, we need to end biodiversity loss starting right now. One place that will determine whether we achieve these goals is the Amazon Basin, and we better take action quickly. That’s because the Amazon Basin is on the brink of an irreversible tipping point. This should be a priority for everyone, since what happens next in the Amazon, has consequences for all of us. If there’s any good news is that new technologies are helping us better understand what’s happening and also pointing the way to solutions to turn things around. But technology alone won’t save the Amazon. We need to radically reimagine the Amazon and empower the people who work and live there. So, what is the Amazon Basin exactly? For one, it’s huge. The biome is roughly seven million square kilometers and spans eight South American countries. This means it’s bigger than all of Europe, two Indias, 470 Switzerlands. It’s home to 60% of the world’s tropical forests, 20% of global freshwater supplies, and at least 10% of all plants and animal species on Earth. Over 30 million people live in the Amazon, including hundreds of indigenous groups. Over a hundred of them live in isolation, rarely or never contacted by outsiders. Far from being an unspoiled wilderness, the Amazon has been inhabited for thousands of years, long before the arrival of Europeans. And today, as it has throughout the centuries, the Amazon is facing devastating pressures from outsiders. So what's driving rampant deforestation in the Amazon? Well, forests are being cut down because of land speculation, an insatiable global appetite for meat, soy, precious metals, timber and other commodities. Over 95% of the deforestation is illegal, a result of land grabbing, weak law enforcement, pervasive corruption and brutal violence. And all of this deforestation and degradation, is drying up the forests and increasing the risks of drought, which in turn contributes to fires. When ranchers, farmers and land grabbers light fires to clear land, they rapidly get out of control. Forest fires aren’t just destroying trees and habitat. They’re also belching massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, generating pollution, disrupting rainfall. What makes a situation truly frightening is the Amazon fires. They’re getting worse. In 2020, over 20 thousand square kilometers of Amazonian forest, most of them in Brazil, burned to the ground. The 2021 season is going to be possibly even worse. High-resolution satellite maps can help us understand what’s at stake. In the 1970s, just 0.5% of the Amazon was cleared. But then Brazil’s military regime built the Trans-Amazonian highway with the goal of moving settlers in to extract minerals, raise cattle and grow soy. The result? Today, about 20% of the Amazon’s primary forest has been deforested. What this means is that we’re dangerously close to a dieback scenario. Now, dieback is expected when primary forest covers reduced by between 20 and 25%. And the effects, they are as bad as the expression sounds, leaving scientists like Carlos Nobre and Tom Lovejoy believe that dieback could turn the world's largest tropical forests into the planet's biggest savanna. Now, once the Amazon starts releasing more carbon than it converts into oxygen, this sets off a chain reaction. For one, it releases a decade's worth of Amazonian greenhouse gas emissions. The forests will also lose their ability to absorb billions of tons of CO2. What we’ll then see is a vicious cycle of shorter, dry seasons, severe water shortages, collapsing food production, unlivable cities, and profound changes to the atmosfere and oceans. Unless governments, markets and consumers radically revalue the rain forest, this nightmare scenario will be unavoidable. Now, what are we going to do about all this? I think at least five priorities stand out. First, we need to reimagine the Amazon Basin. This means rethinking what it was, what it is, and most importantly, what it can be. For at least five centuries, the Amazon has been treated like a frontier to be conquered, tamed and settled. Its forests, fauna and inhabitants, they were subjected to ruthless commercial exploitation with devastating consequences. Today, most governments still see it as a source of raw materials, and are fiercely defensive about their sovereign territories. Despite its riches and diversity, or maybe because of it, there’s no genuinely progressive vision for the Amazon today, and this has to change. What’s needed is a bold vision for protecting the Amazon, while also building a sustainable green economy. This vision needs to be designed and led by the people who live there and informed by science and technology. This is the only way to achieve a genuinely protected, sustainable and inclusive Amazon. Second, we have to get to zero deforestation before 2030. There’s no good reason why trees are still being cut down in the 21st century in the Amazon or anywhere. Land simply needs to be made more productive. The reason trees keep getting cut down is because, in the short term, cleared land is still more valuable than deforested and degraded land. That means there are perverse incentives to strip the Amazon bear. Until markets eliminate deforestation from their supply chains, and governments get serious about enforcing laws, we’re not going to reverse this problem. We have all the remote sensing and forensic tools at our disposal to identify who is breaking laws. We can trace illegal commodities entering supply chains. It’s time we use all the technology at our disposal. Third, governments and businesses, they got to get serious about disrupting environment crimes and the networks that perpetrate them. Amazingly, despite the catastrophic increase of illegal deforestation in recent years, some governments are eviscerating environmental protection laws and gutting key agencies. This isn’t just morally and ethically immoral, it’s fueling impunity. In Brazil, less than 3% of the environmental crime-related fines are ever paid at all. Right now, less than a third of global supply chains have policies to reduce illegal deforestation. This is unacceptable. Today, we have high powered satellites and drones, AI powered alert systems and low cost sensors that can give us all the situational intelligence we need. But this, it’s not enough. We also need to strengthen the investigation and prosecution of environment crimes and penalties. They got to stick. One way to accelerate this is to develop more transparent and accountable systems to register property titles and the demarcation of land. Digitized, accessible and up to date ledgers and Blockchain verification would be potentially game-changing to the Amazon. Fourth, we need to see real progress on reforestation and land regeneration. The good news is that there’s a growing appetite for these kinds of efforts. We’re seeing new climate financing arrangements and coalitions, as well as investor activism picking up everywhere. Carbon credits, green bonds, ESG, social impact investing, they’re all becoming more widely accepted and they’re all part of the solution. A group of investors representing over 16 trillion dollars in assets have started urging companies to meet deforestation commitments or risk economic consequences. And this year, hundreds of activist groups, pension funds, investors and retailers, they’ve threatened boycotts if steps to green supply chain are not taken immediately. Finally, we need to drastically ramp up the green economy and support the communities for the custodians of the Amazon basin. A big part of this is about strengthen the region's bio economy, ensuring more sustainable agriculture and reducing demand for beef. That’s just the start. So is the use of digital platforms to document to safeguard the Amazon’s natural assets for current and future generations. Indigenous communities play a central role in protecting the Amazon, and they must be granted land rights. Study after study shows how empowering indigenous groups is the most cost effective way of keeping forests intact, storing carbon, and maintaining biodiversity. And with more and more viruses emerging from deforested areas, preserving forested areas can serve as a barrier to disease transmission. Even more fundamentally, we need to redesign the relationship between indigenous groups and the global economy. For centuries, they've been conceived as backward, justifying colonization and resource extraction. This view is an utterly reprehensible. It’s incompatible with the facts. In fact, there’s evidence that up until the 1500s, indigenous people scored dramatically higher on quality of life indices than the average European. And over the past few centuries, indigenous peoples have played a key role in shaping the Amazon forests. Their approaches aren’t sustainable, that is, net zero. It’s also nurturing, which is net positive. Their expertise and insight makes them the world’s top force protection specialists. We need to strengthen indigenous networks if any of us have any chance of survival. Now, these five priorities, they're not restricted to South America. They apply to the world. Each of us needs to get engaged in ways big and small, and each of us can take steps right now. So let’s start by consuming and investing in products that are deforestation free. We can pressure companies that are investing in unsustainable products, including from the Amazon, to stop that kind of practice. We have to support the indigenous groups, environmental defenders, and smallholder farmers on the front line for impact investing. And we can demand more from our politicians, so they take swifter action to end illegal deforestation and enable fair and just alternatives. Look, the facts are clear. The health of our planet depends on a healthy Amazon. And a healthy Amazon requires radical action today, not tomorrow.
