Close to a Tipping Point? The Amazon and the Challenge of Sustainable Development under Growing Climate Pressures

Abstract

This commentary examines the challenge of sustainable development in the Amazon, arguing that global efforts to mitigate climate change and current Amazonian policies are clearly inadequate to prevent global warming and deforestation from tipping the forest into a savanna. It analyses the growing climate pressures jeopardising the Amazon's resilience; the erratic Brazilian, Bolivian, Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian governance of the forest; and the failure of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) to establish long-term forest conservation policies in the region. The research demonstrates that the ‘savannisation hypothesis’ is potentially closer to reality than most debates in the social sciences assume and should be considered seriously. The commentary concludes by suggesting possible pathways for preventing the dieback of the Amazon. These are based on three strategic axes: the strengthening of the ACTO, the promotion of a technological revolution in the forest, and a progressive environmental diplomacy by the Amazonian countries.

Bolsonaro's government and the dismantling of the participative institutions in environmental policy

“…According to the civil society organization Observatório do Clima (Climate Observatory, OC), in the first year of Bolsonaro's government, there was a 25% reduction in IBAMA's inspection activities. There was also a 35% reduction in the prevention and control of forest fires in comparison with the previous budget (Observatório do Clima, 2021), even though the number of starting points of forest fires in the Amazon forest had grown compared to the previous year (Alencar et al, 2019;Pereira & Viola, 2020). The weakening of the leading Brazilian environmental agencies in the Amazon in 2019 coincided with significant environmental disasters, such as increased forest fires (Bastos Lima & da Costa, 2021).…”