"COP27 must create a climate agreement that protects 80% of the Amazon by 2025, Indigenous leaders, researchers and environmental organizations urge", 7 November 2022

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The Amazonia, the largest global carbon sink, is at a critical tipping point due to the high rates of deforestation and degradation that already affect 26% of the region, which scientists and Indigenous peoples say could trigger a process of savannization of the entire system.

Amazonian Indigenous leaders, researchers, and representatives of environmental organizations from the nine countries, presented new scientific evidence included in the report “Amazonia against the Clock”, which identifies Key Priority Areas, where the degradation and transformation occurs at the country level, as well as its drivers.  Furthermore, it outlines the immediate needs and solutions to address the crisis in the Amazonia as an urgent measure to curb the effects of climate change.  The report concludes that Brazil is the epicenter of the greatest degradation and deforestation, causing already a tipping point in the southeast of the region.

According to the report, achieving 80% is still feasible by 2025.  The remaining 74% (629 million hectares in priority areas) is still standing and requires immediate protection and 6% of the region can still be restored.  

Indigenous leaders also highlighted the relationship between ecosystem loss and conflict in the region where violence; assassinations of indigenous leaders and environmental defenders, as well as climate, biodiversity, social, economic, and political distress must be understood as symptoms of one problem. They call on world leaders gathered at COP27 to establish a global agreement to protect 80% of this region before 2025...