2024 was a brutal year for the Amazon rainforest, with rampant wildfires and extreme drought devastating large swathes of a biome that provides a crucial counterbalance to climate change.
A warming climate fueled drought, which in turn fueled the worst year of fires since 2005. And those fires contributed to deforestation, with authorities suspecting some fires were set to more easily clear land for ranching.
The Amazon is twice the size of India and stretches across eight countries and one territory, storing vast amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the planet. It has approximately 20% of the world’s fresh water and astonishing biodiversity, including 16,000 known tree species. But governments have historically viewed it as an area to be exploited, with little regard for its sustainability or the rights of indigenous peoples. Experts say exploitation by individuals and organized crime is increasing at an alarming rate.
“The fires and drought experienced in the Amazon rainforest in 2024 could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point,” said Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, an organization dedicated to protecting the rainforest. “Humanity’s window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but it is still open.”
There were some bright spots. The level of forest loss in the Amazon declined in both Brazil and Colombia. And countries gathered for the annual U.N. conference on biodiversity and agreed to give indigenous peoples more say in conservation decisions.
“If the Amazon rainforest is to avoid the tipping point, indigenous people will have been a determining factor,” Miller said.
Forest fires and extreme drought
Forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon – home to most of this rainforest – fell by 30.6% compared to the previous year, the lowest level of destruction in nine years. The improvement under left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva contrasted with deforestation, which reached a 15-year high under Lula’s predecessor, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who prioritized agricultural industry expansion over forest protection and weakened environmental agencies.
In July, Colombia reported an all-time low in deforestation by 2023, due to a decline in environmental destruction. The country’s Environment Minister Susana Muhamad warned that the 2024 figures may not be so promising as a significant increase in deforestation had already been recorded in July due to dry weather caused by El Nino, a weather phenomenon that central Pacific Ocean is warming. Illegal economies continue to drive deforestation in the Andean country.
“It is impossible to overlook the threat posed by organized crime and the economies they control to the preservation of the Amazon,” said Bram Ebus, consultant for Crisis Group in Latin America. “Illegal gold mining is expanding rapidly, driven by rising global market prices, and revenues from illegal economies often exceed the state budgets allocated to combat it.”
In Brazil, large swathes of rainforest were shrouded in smoke in August as fires raged in the Amazon, the Cerrado savannah, the Pantanal wetlands and the state of Sao Paulo. Fires have traditionally been used for deforestation and rangeland management, and these human-caused fires were largely responsible for igniting the wildfires.
For a second year, the Amazon fell to desperate lows, leading some countries to declare a state of emergency and distribute food and water to struggling residents. The situation was most critical in Brazil, where one of the Amazon’s main tributaries fell to its lowest level on record.
Cesar Ipenza, an environmental lawyer who lives in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, said he believes people are becoming increasingly aware of the fundamental role of the Amazon “for the survival of society as a whole.” But like Miller, he worries about a “point of no return from Amazon’s destruction.”
According to the nonprofit Rainforest Foundation US, it was the worst year for Amazon fires since 2005. Between January and October, an area larger than the state of Iowa — 37.42 million hectares, or about 15.1 million hectares of the Brazilian Amazon — burned . Bolivia experienced a record number of fires in the first ten months of the year.
“Forest fires have become a constant, especially in the summer months, and require special attention from the authorities, who do not know how to deal with them or how to respond to them,” Ipenza said.
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Guyana also experienced a wave of fires this year.
Indigenous voices and rights made progress in 2024
The United Nations Conference on Biodiversity – known this year as COP16 – was hosted by Colombia. The meetings put the Amazon in the spotlight and a historic agreement was reached to give indigenous groups a greater voice in conservation decisions, a development that builds on a growing movement to recognize the role of indigenous people in protecting land and combating climate change.
Both Ebus and Miller saw promise in the appointment of Martin von Hildebrand as the new Secretary General of the Amazon Treaty Cooperation Organization, announced at COP16.
“As an expert on Amazon communities, he will need to align governments for joint conservation efforts. If the political will is there, international backers will step forward to finance new strategies to protect the world’s largest tropical rainforest,” Ebus said.
Ebus said Amazon countries need to work together more, whether in law enforcement, deploying joint emergency teams to fight forest fires or providing health care in remote Amazon border areas. But they need help from the rest of the world, he said.
“The well-being of the Amazon is a shared global responsibility, as consumer demand worldwide drives the commodity trade that finances violence and environmental destruction,” he said.
Next year marks a pivotal moment for the Amazon region as Belém do Pará in northern Brazil hosts the region’s first United Nations COP that will focus on climate.
“Leaders from the Amazon countries have the opportunity to demonstrate strategies and demand tangible support,” Ebus said.
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