The Amazon Rainforest: A Climate Superpower
By Mariana Heredia
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Gigaton Potential
The Amazon rainforest alone houses 76 GT of carbon. According to the World Resources Institute, if ranked among nations, tropical deforestation would place third in carbon emissions, behind only the US and China.
For reference: in 2019, the world emitted 51 gigatons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases. Project Drawdown estimates we need to cumulatively eliminate 1,000 GT from 2020-2050 to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
Carbon Flux in the Amazon, 2001-2020. The graph shows which parts of the Amazon rainforest have gone from removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to adding additional CO2 due to fires and broader deforestation. Source: Amazon Conservation/MAAP
You Might Be Interested If...
You care about rainforests around the world
You are passionate about international development and a just climate transition
You are curious about incentives that can mitigate climate change and want to understand how we can incentivize people to protect our natural landscapes instead of destroying them
What You Should Know
Why is the Amazon rainforest being deforested?
Unlike the fires in California forests, the great majority of fires in the Brazilian Amazon - which hosts 60% of the Amazon Rainforest territory - are not only caused by rising temperatures, but also by illegal activities from cattle ranchers, land grabbers, loggers, miners and locals who are clearing parts of the Amazon. Even though loggers and miners play an important role in Amazon destruction, farmers and cattle ranchers are the biggest threat to Amazon protection.
Brazil is the third biggest meat producer and second biggest soybean producer in the world. Agribusiness has been the strongest performing sector of Brazil’s economy in the last two decades, and the US-China trade war has positioned Brazil well to replace the US as the global leader in soybean and meat exports. The demand for soybeans and meat has created pressure to rapidly clear forests.
Politics have also played a critical role in Amazon deforestation, with recent legislation serving as an impediment to protection and satellite monitoring. For those who are interested in the Amazon, it’s important to understand the political context (see here for more information).
Graph build by Mariana Heredia with data from INPE
The crucial role of Amazon for the world
The impact of Amazon destruction reaches far beyond South America. For generations, the rainforest has stored an immense amount of carbon in its soil and played host to a tremendous number of trees, playing an important role in keeping the global temperature stable.
Moreover, the Amazon has the highest biodiversity among all tropical forests in the world. One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon basin is also the largest drainage basin in the world. The water flowing through the Amazonian rivers is equivalent to 20 percent of the water that runs off Earth’s surface. For that reason, the Amazon has an important role in climate regulation thanks to its “flying rivers.” The trees in the Amazon suck up water from the ground and pump out billions of tons of water vapor per day into vast “flying rivers”, which are responsible for regulating humidity and rains across many countries.
Key Players
Even though the current scenario seems dire, there are several agents, companies, NGOs, lawmakers and institutions working to reverse the trend and preventing the Amazon from reaching a tipping point – according a study from University of São Paulo, it could be reached if as little as 20 to 25 percent of the Amazon rainforest is cleared. At present, in 2022, 20 percent is cleared.
In the last decades, several NGOs, public initiatives, and international organizations have been doing relevant projects aimed at reforestation and conservation. Those projects were essential to preserve the rich biomes / species and to maintain rich and diverse forests, not to mention the political role they have in pressuring governments and political leaders to protect the forests from a regulatory / legislative perspective.
And in the last couple of years, a wave of Brazilian entrepreneurs and well-known funds have invested heavily and started companies aiming to reforest the Amazon. The critical political and environmental moment and the blooming of the voluntary carbon credits market have spurred entrepreneurs to dive into the goal of reversing deforestation. Projects such as re.green, which aims to reforest one million hectares in the Atlantic / Amazon rainforest, are a beacon of hope for Brazil and the world.
Opportunities for Innovation
Increase Indigenous and Quilombolas territory demarcation: According to MapBiomas - a Brazilian collaborative network formed by NGOs, universities, and startups that aims to understand the transformations of the Brazilian territory through AI and satellite images - the Indigenous territories are the most preserved areas in the Brazilian territory. Only 1.6 percent of the area was deforested between 1985 to 2020, while 11.3 percent of the native vegetation was lost in the same period in the remaining territory.
In Brazil, there are 725 Indigenous territories at different stages of the demarcation process. Of those, 487 have been completely approved. Jair Bolsonaro's government is the first since 1988 to not demarcate any Indigenous or Quilombola land.
Increase the territory of Conservation Units: As shown in the picture below, creating state and federal Conservation Units (CUs) has been one of the most effective strategies to protect the Amazon rainforest. Known as “Protected Areas” around the world, the term and concept of “Conservation Unit” had been used by environmentalists and lawmakers since the mid-1970s, but it was only in 2000 that a bill was passed instituting the National System of Conservation Units.
As a result of much work done in demarking and managing CUs, led by serious and committed Environment Ministries in charge from 2003 and 2016, the Legal Amazon saw its deforestation decrease by 75 percent during the period, according to INPE.
Empower Amazon communities and their economies: The Amazon rainforest has not only incredible potential to strengthen Brazil’s economy, it also has huge potential to serve as a medical and nutritional source for Latin America and the world. The forest has outstanding biodiversity, capable of producing tons of nuts (“Brazil nuts”), functional fruits such as Açai, highly nutritional flours, uncountable medicinal and nutritional oils, fruit seeds and plants such as Andiroba, Babaçu, Buriti, Copaiba, Tucumã, Pequi, Cupuaçu, among the dozens of existing possibilities. Moreover, the ancient Indigenous knowledge could easily be exported to heal and feed the world’s population.
Strong local economies guarantee the permanence of local communities that can serve as forest guardians and agroforest builders. Providing sources of income for those populations would reverse the trend of relying on deforestation as a source of income.
About the Author: Mariana Heredia is an entrepreneur and is now an advisor for her company in Brazil, Pronutrition – a B2B business focused on leveraging a better innovation cycle for food companies by designing and manufacturing new product lines. She is a Masters student at Stanford GSB, where she co-leads the All About no Waste group. She moved to Silicon Valley to embark on a new journey to mitigate climate change. She is the most excited about the carbon credits market, reforestation / land restoration & agroforests, and circular economy.