The Amazon Nears a Tipping Point: How Nature-Based Solutions Are Urgently Needed
Wednesday, September 24; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest and known as the “lungs of the world,” but it faces unprecedented environmental impacts from climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and extreme weather that could transform the lush rainforest into a dry savannah.
A large portion of the southern Amazon is already very close to a tipping point: the dry season is now four to five weeks lengthier than in the last 45 years, resulting in increased tree mortality. The southeastern forest has become a carbon source, producing more carbon than it captures. However, reversing deforestation and biodiversity loss through nature-based solutions can prevent the Amazon from reaching this tipping point. Speaker Carlos Nobre will address how zero deforestation, large-scale forest restoration, a new socio-bioeconomy of healthy standing forests and flowing rivers, and a combination of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ knowledge with science for innovative technologies, are urgently needed solutions to this crisis.