Protecting the Amazon from Fires and the Pandemic

The Amazon River Basin has an area of about 7 million square kilometers and covers some 40% of South American territory. The Amazon encompasses around 5.5 million km2 of rainforest spreading across nine countries: Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname. Scientific reports show the constant loss of forest-covered territory. Nature Communications vol. 11, 4978 (September 2020) estimates current forest coverage at 4.93 million km2. Over the last sixty years, due to the increase in logging and uncontrolled fires, the recovery rate of the Amazon forest has dwindled critically, and we are not only witnessing the continuous degradation of the world’s most important rainforest biome, but a trend approaching a point of no return for the rainforest.

The Amazon is vital for the cycles that control atmospheric processes and renewable natural resources in the region. It generates 20% of the planet’s fresh water and at least 10% of the planet’s oxygen, and is home to 25% of land biodiversity, at least 6,000 animal species and 40,000 plant species, including at least 10% of all known wildlife species.

The Amazon plays a regulatory role in carbon, water and energy cycles. The forest generates its own rain and balances the water cycle in the basin and in its area of direct influence, such as the transitional ecosystems around it: the La Plata river basin and the Andes. Amazon biome ensures stability in the carbon production, capture and storage cycle; this role is significantly altered with drought, higher temperatures, lower-than-expected precipitation, uncontrolled fires and subsequent land degradation and negative changes in soil use. Thus, any positive or negative alteration of the Amazon forest sends ripples around the globe.

The current global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected 34 million people living in the Amazon. After the first reports of infection and deaths, the Amazonian towns of Manaus in Brazil and Iquitos in Peru were put on the map as two of the places hit hardest by the SARS-Cov-2 virus in Latin America.

The indigenous population of 3 million is spread across some 400 communities, according to statistics from the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization. About 60 of them live in total isolation. The vulnerability of the indigenous population, a frontline defender of biodiversity, is very high, and the impacts they have suffered during the pandemic will probably only be visible in the months to come.

The staggering expansion of uncontrolled fires that ravaged the Amazon in 2020 is a consequence of different factors that are exacerbated and multiplied during the COVID-19, starting with the reduction of territorial checks, a decimated jungle population, increased forest fragmentation due to indiscriminate logging, destruction of biological corridors, increased intensive agriculture, mining, illegal land occupations and the apparent postponement of environmental and natural resources management in public and agendas.

The incidence of fires in the Amazon shows alarming increases in 2020 compared to 2019, which had been a record year in South America and around the world. Several publications, including the Global Wildlife Fund (WWF) “Fires, Forest and the Future” report, May 2020; NASA FIRMS model results, April and September 2020; and the article by A.Staal et al. “Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century,” October 2020, show that fire hotspots in April 2020 were already 19% higher than the previous year, with a 45% increase in July and a 60% rise in early October. The number of deforestation alerts in Brazil rose by at least 33%. Bolivia reported a 35% increase in fire hotspots in July. The area of forest impacted—to different extents—is at least 68 million hectares, i.e. about 12% of the Amazon forest. This indicates that in addition to soil degradation due to loss of forest, the issue of savannization of the Amazon is also exacerbated by the critical loss of biomass.

The challenge is tremendous, and as a result, responses need to be up to par. The Amazon forest acts as a fortress, a key global natural asset that guarantees the planet’s environmental health. But at the same time, it is sensitive, unstable and vulnerable to human action. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) showed that the current negative trend in biodiversity and ecosystem health will undermine the ability to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) by at least 20%

The Amazon is at the heart of the range of responses that will help us achieve the goals of conservation, sustainable production and inclusion. Nature-based solutions are crucial to achieving the post-2020 biodiversity and Paris Agreement targets and, while providing ecosystem services to the population that are paramount to their resilience, health, habitat and well-being.

CAF—development bank of Latin America—supports countries with financing and knowledge applied in solutions, based on regional projects for the sustainable management of fire, associated with sustainable production chains, in urban infrastructure for the betterment of cities, in harmony with nature, as well as in conservation and sustainability of protected natural areas and key ecosystems associated with soil and forest recovery. There seems to be a consensus that urgent action is needed to reverse the loss of the Amazon forest, while outlining a greener economic recovery and the consolidation of sustainable development in the Amazon.