3 February 2010
"The World Bank released a study that finally put the impacts of climate change, deforestation and fires together. The tipping point for the Amazon is 20 percent deforestation," and that is "a scary result," Tom Lovejoy, a member of the external review panel for the report, told Tierramérica in an interview. The study, "Assessment of the Risk of Amazon Dieback," released Jan. 22, drew on the expertise of several international research institutions, including Japan's Meteorological Research Institute, Britain's Exeter University, Brazil's Centre for Weather Forecasting and Climate Change (CPET/INPE), Germany's Potsdam Institute and Earth3000.
According to the World Bank report, Low Carbon-High Growth: Latin America & Climate Change, the most disastrous potential impact [of climate change] to the region could be a dramatic die-back of the Amazon rainforest, converting large areas to savannah. Most Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVM) based on the IPCC emission scenarios show a significant risk of climate-induced forest dieback in tropical, boreal and mountain areas by the end of the 21st century, and some General Circulation Models predict a drastic reduction in rainfall in the western Amazon.
To read the World Bank study on Amazon Dieback, see:
The study predicts with more certainty than any other prior study that the legal Amazon (one of the four primary global climate feedback mechanisms) is very close (about 2-3% of total deforestation) to a tipping point of combined events that will lead ultimately to its collapse. The Amazon tropical forests process more than twice the amount carbon generated by anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The Amazon basin produces aobut 20% of world's fresh water. By Amazon dieback, the study refers to a changed cycle of evapotranspiration and precipitation that results in changed rainfall probabilities and locations, which induce drought and loss of biomass, make forests more susceptible for forest fire, and ultimately to failure for such forests to regenerate. A threshold of 25% loss of biomass carbon resulting from climate impacts is considered to be an indication of dieback. Dieback would include outright deforestation in some areas and savanization of others. Overall, dieback would convert the Amazon forests from a carbon sink into a carbon source.
The other three positive feedback responses to global warming are the slowing of the North Atlantic Thrermohaline Circulation, the breakup of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and methane emissions from melting permafrost. Each, like the Amazon forest which stores about 120 billion metric tons of carbon in its biomass, function to regulate the global climate and under stress, could accelerate global warming.
The causes of Amazon dieback are a combination of global factors (climate change, only partially attributed [<3%) to Brazil], human induced deforestation, and related but relatively uncontrolled factors (forest fire). Of the first two "controllable" factors, dealing with only one will not reverse the risk of Dieback. A policy of zero deforestation is considered an emergency, although insufficient measure to stabilize the process. The effects of climate change alone would contribute to the reduction of the extent of the rainforest biome by one third by the end of the century, according to the report. Brazil will depend on others (namely the US and China) to stabilize global carbon density to ultimately to save the Amazon and in turn stabilize a key feedback loop to the global climate.
See BICECA analysis of the World Bank study.
Paraphrasing the study findings, Thomas Lovejoy reported to Tierramerica that the "tipping point for the Amazon is 20 percent deforestation." This threshold is lower than earlier studies that put the tipping point at 40-60% loss. The legal Amazon is already 17 to 18 percent deforested. At this point deforestation combined with spreading fires and overall warming of 2 degrees Celsius would initiate a breakdown of parts of the Amazon's hydrogeologic system. The World Bank study is consistent and updates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC), which warned that climate change could produce a drier Amazon, resulting in a 40 percent loss of the ecosystem.
The World Bank outlines the likely results of three business as usual scenarios, which vary by the rate of deforestation (20% and 50%). The worst case scenario involving the combined effects of climate change, deforestation and forest fire would result in the overall loss of 65% of the Amazon by 2075. Table 2 summarizes the regional results under both scenarios. The Eastern Amazon is hit hardest, leaving only 5% by 2075 under 50% deforestation scenario. The Northwest Amazon would lose 40% of baseline forest by 2100. The Southern Amazon is the region with the highest risk of Amazon dieback, which coincides with highest current rates of deforestation and some of the most damaging infrastructure projects, would see a conversion from rainforest to savanna over 30%-80% of its area. The effects for the Northeast Amazon are less, with 4%-7% loss.
Some implications of the study - stated and unstated:
The study states some of the most obvious implications of the findings- that conservation should be ramped up in vulnerable areas of the Amazon. However, the study stops short of addressing the political implications - including how the Bank's own lack of coherence on a global climate strategy is a contributing factor to the catastrophic scenarios explained in the report. Some examples include the Bank's support for BNDES, the inability of the Bank to achieve an updated legal registry of land in Brazil, and the broad endorsement of an export model that drives extractive industries without proper regulation. While the study was reportedly well received within the Bank, it is somewhat surprising to observe that lack of visibility on the World Bank's website. Despite a purported launch of the study in January, the Bank has yet to post a public link or schedule a public launch of the report.
The World Bank will present the study in Brasilia on Feb. 26, 2010 to government officials and a closed audience, but has not announced any plans to open the event to the Brazilian public. The Bank presented the preliminary findings to the Brazilian government on Oct. 30, 2009.
To prevent Amazon dieback, the World Bank study recommends that zero deforestation and a massive reforestation programs should be viewed as emergency measures in the Amazon. The Eastern and Southern Amazon should be a priority, where the combined impacts would nearly wipe out all forest area by end of the century. As straightforward as these recommendations might seem, the Amazon Dieback study also illuminates certain inconsistencies in the World Bank's climate strategy, raising political questions about the Bank's capacity to coordinate the actions likely to be necessary to revert the threats.
1. What is the Bank's direct contribution to zero deforestation in the Amazon? Perhaps most troubling about the report's unstated implications is the implicit challenge raised for the World Bank in its relationship with Brazil. While implied in the rates of deforestation included in the Bank's climate models, there is no explicit recognition of the direct and indirect causal impacts of large infrastructure and its association with illegal logging and agribusiness expansion. Past World Bank loans are part of the legacy of Amazon highways (Polornoreste) that have contributed to current deforestation problems. Recent loans by the World Bank have attempted to reverse this legacy by providing direct support for a National Environment program and supporting sustainability policies through Amazon state governments such as Para and Acre. However, at the same time, the Bank's private sector arm - IFC, funded Bertin a disastrous cattle processing facility in the Amazon and has provided $1.3 billion through a development policy loan to the largest development bank in Brazil - BNDES - the principal source of finance to many of the proposed dams and highways in the Amazon. Well known to most observers of Amazon deforestation trends, the incompatibility between many of the BNDES funded Amazon infrastructure projects with the recomendations in the report raises questions about how the World Bank will pursue this controversial loan to BNDES that is designed to encourage sustainability outcomes.
2. What is the Bank's role in the increased global climate forcings that are reponsible for at least a third of the projected Amazon dieback? The multiple causality of Amazon dieback (involving local and global climate forcings) suggests that no single focus on deforestation will be enough. The report suggests only that the findings be discussed by climate specialists and policy makers in the Government of Brazil, but offers no recommendations for how the findings should be introduced into global climate negotiations and with the parties most directly responsible for the systemic forcings that will contribute to Amazon dieback. Despite the promotion of a low carbon development energy transition, the challenge of dealing with the global climate factors that contribute to Amazon dieback will be heightened by the World Bank's continued encouragement of fossil fuel dependency.
3. What is the World Bank's role in directing carbon finance to the Amazon? : The World Bank, through its leadership of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the Forest Investment Program, and a number of other Climate Investment Funds is supporting the use of carbon finance to offset OECD GHG emissions and promote reduced deforestation in places like the Amazon. Many question the effectiveness of carbon markets and these funds in reverting the upward trend in GHG emissions. The World Bank is nevertheless moving steadily to position itself as the principal mechanism for carbon finance. With the FCPF, the Bank is supporting the formulation of REDD preparation plans in Amazon countries - with the exception of Brazil. Given the urgency of ensuring of zero deforestation, the FCPF process could offer important leverage in achieving this goal. Yet the national focus of the FCPF process and the non-participation of Brazil raises questions about how effective the Bank's coordination of Amazon countries can be in addressing regional drivers of deforestation and achieving inherently common targets.
As the World Bank considers how to introduce the scientific results of the Amazon dieback study into the post-Copenhagen debate over climate strategy, it might also consider how to address these and other questions about the coherence of its own actions and strategy on climate as well.
See related news items:
Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com February 03, 2010 -- Rainforest expert agrees with IPCC: warns of 'tipping point' for Amazon
By Stephen Leahy* PARIS, Feb 2, 2010 (IPS/Tierramérica) - The Amazon jungle "is very close to a tipping point," and if destruction continues, it could shrink to one third of its original size in just 65 years, warns Thomas Lovejoy, world-renowned tropical biologist.
Climate change, deforestation and fire are the drivers of this potential Amazonian apocalypse, according to Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Washington DC-based Heinz Centre for Science, Economics and the Environment, and chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank.
Lovejoy laid out the scenario for participants at the Biodiversity Science Policy Conference in Paris last week, sponsored by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), and marking the beginning of the U.N.'s International Year of Biodiversity.
"The World Bank released a study that finally put the impacts of climate change, deforestation and fires together. The tipping point for the Amazon is 20 percent deforestation," and that is "a scary result," Lovejoy told Tierramérica in an interview.
The study, "Assessment of the Risk of Amazon Dieback," released Jan. 22, drew on the expertise of several international research institutions, including Japan's Meteorological Research Institute, Britain's Exeter University, Brazil's Centre for Weather Forecasting and Climate Change (CPET/INPE), Germany's Potsdam Institute and Earth3000.
The results and analysis were reviewed by an international blue-ribbon panel of scientists.
Lovejoy, head of the committee responsible for this major scientific investigation, said the Amazon has already lost 17 to 18 percent of its forests. Furthermore, "it has a remarkable hydrogeological system where the forest generates at least half of its own rainfall."
This literally means the rainforest makes its own rain, but it also brings rainfall to many areas outside of the Amazon, including the central-western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and northern Argentina, he said.
What the study shows for the first time is the combination of global warming on a path to reach two degrees Celsius, deforestation of roughly 20 percent of the original forest, and forest fires that undermine the Amazon's unique hydrogeological system.
The Amazonian south and southeast will receive much less rainfall. Less moisture means those areas will be more prone to fires, which not only destroy the forest but also further dry out the surrounding forest - all of which reduces the Amazon's ability to produce rain. The process becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
"The forest eventually converts to cerrado (the Brazilian savanna) after a lot of fire, human misery, loss of biodiversity and emission of carbon into the atmosphere," said Lovejoy.
The Earth's average temperature has already warmed 0.8 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era. At the 15th Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Copenhagen in December, virtually all countries agreed that the warming must not surpass two degrees.
The report's conclusion: "For the Amazon as a whole, the remaining tropical forest will shrink to about three-quarters of its original area by 2025 and further to about only one-third of its original extension by 2075 as a result of these combined impacts of climate change, deforestation, and fire."
"The good news is that deforested areas can be reforested and provide a safety margin," said Lovejoy, maintaining some optimism.
It is estimated that a single hectare of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tonnes of living plants, including more than 750 types of trees and 1,500 other plants, the report notes.
A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers, and more than 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more species than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
The Andes mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna. For example, one in five of all birds in the world can be found there.
Sadly, before the end of this century many, and perhaps most, of those species will become extinct. After millions of years of existence many plants, insects, birds, animals will never be seen again on the Earth. Habitat loss and climate change will be the biggest reasons for their extinction.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conservatively estimates that 30 percent of all species will be extinct by the end of this century, if global warming is not kept below two degrees.
Other experts, such as eminent Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson, told participants at the UNESCO conference that extinctions could go as high as 50 percent.
"Our purpose this year is to focus the world's attention on the need to stop the destruction of biodiversity, the destruction of nature," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said in the opening address of the conference in Paris.
The countries party to the Convention agreed in 1990 to slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. "We will not meet that goal," Djoghlaf told Tierramérica.
However, with the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity, and the many events, celebrations and conferences to be held around the world, Djoghlaf hopes biodiversity, which is another term for nature, will garner interest and support from the public and policy makers.
With the theme "Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our life," organisers are launching a largely educational effort to explain that plants, animals, insects, birds, and bacteria make up the world's ecosystems, which provide humanity with food, fibre and clean water and air.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, "60 percent of the world's ecosystems are degraded and failing. We have an obligation to change our ways. This is not a luxury," Djoghlaf said.
In October, the 193 countries that have signed the Convention will set new biodiversity reduction targets at a conference in Nagoya, Japan.
The failure to achieve the 2010 targets for protecting biodiversity resulted from countries' inability to define how they would reach them, Djoghlaf said.
He is confident that, having learned from these mistakes, countries will set specific national goals to curb species loss, with comprehensive plans on how to achieve them. That will then feed into a global target for 2020.
"We will have studies, reports and scientific indicators to guide us, but in the end it is up to policy makers to set targets and policies that will make it happen," said the biodiversity chief.
(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END)