This figure is calculated from annual satellite monitoring since 1985 from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana. This report is a collaboration between Raisg and his MapBiomas, a network of Brazilian non-profits, universities and technology startups.
“The loss is enormous, virtually irreversible and has no prospect of improvement,” said Raisg, a consortium of civil society organizations from countries in the region, in a statement on Friday. “The data are a red flag and give a sense of urgency to the need for concerted, decisive and persuasive international action.”
Brazil, which accounts for about two-thirds of the Amazon, is also at the forefront of destruction. In almost 40 years, 19% of her rainforest has been destroyed. The main cause is the expansion of cattle grazing due to the opening of roads. The country accounted for 84% of all deforestation during this period.
Almost half of Brazil’s carbon footprint comes from deforestation. According to a study published in his Nature in 2021, the destruction is so widespread that the eastern Amazon has become a carbon sink rather than a global carbon sink.
By 2021, 74% of the Amazon area will be covered by rainforest, with 9% of other natural vegetation types. According to Raisg’s estimates, the area is 8.5 million square kilometers with a population of 47 million he said.
“At least about 75 billion tons of carbon is stored throughout the Amazon,” Wayne Walker, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research Center, said at a press conference in Lima, Peru, on Friday. “If all the carbon was released into the atmosphere immediately, it would be about seven times the annual global emissions.”
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