RUNNING OUT OF TIME

THE DRYING up of the Amazon ecosystem is a sign of a planetary crisis. The rainforests are one of the nine tipping points or thresholds in the climate system that, if crossed, would cause irreversible changes.

The region could go past its tipping point if deforestation reaches 40 per cent, suggest various studies. As per a 2022 analysis by US-based non-profit Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, the Amazon has already lost 13 per cent of its original forest cover.

7 The tipping points are also correlated, which means that breaching one is likely to impact others, eventually leading to changes elsewhere on the Earth. In February this year, experts from the Beijing Normal University, China, found a correlation between the harsh warm temperatures in the Amazon and the rising temperatures in Tibet and the West Antarctic ice sheet.

According to Ayan Fleischmann, a researcher at the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development in Brazil, the effects of the prolonged drought, particularly the mass dolphin mortality in August and September, are the first signs of a tipping point being reached in the Amazon. "If we continue to see such dieoffs in the following years, there can be a true decline in biodiversity," he says.

For years, scientists have warned that a tipping point in the Amazon is inevitable. According to a study published in Nature Climate Change in March 2022, more than 75 per cent of the Amazon rainforests have lost their resilience, which is pushing them towards a tipping point since the early 2000s.