CARLOS NOBRE and MARIELOS PEÑA-CLAROS
SÃO PAULO/WAGENINGEN – Between November 2023 and October 2024, the Amazon rainforest faced yearly average temperature increases above 2° Celsius. Record-breaking heat waves, droughts, and fires have ravaged the region; deforestation is still too high; and indigenous peoples and local communities have faced proliferating threats against their livelihoods and well-being.
The threat these trends represent can hardly be overstated. The Amazon is rapidly approaching a tipping point, beyond which forest dieback could cause permanent degradation. The region’s transformation into self-drying areas of open vegetation would wreak havoc on the biome’s unmatched biodiversity, its food systems, and the livelihoods of its 47 million inhabitants. It would also destroy a vital carbon sink and a powerful source of moisture for South America – the “flying rivers” that sustain rainfall systems far south of the Amazon Basin.
Despite ample opportunity for multilateral efforts to protect and restore the Amazon, the outcomes so far have been woefully inadequate. Just last October, leaders gathered in Cali, Colombia, for the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16). A few weeks later, they headed to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the 29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29). But neither gathering yielded the necessary results.
To be sure, COP16 brought the adoption of a new “program of work,” which should enhance the ability of indigenous peoples and local communities to contribute to biodiversity conservation. It also featured the launch of the Cali Fund, which facilitates the equitable distribution of profits from the use of sequenced genetic information that has been collected from the natural world. But only 44 of the 196 parties at the event managed to produce new national biodiversity plans.
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