Researchers warn Amazon deforestation threatens climate balance

Environmentalists have been warning about the deforestation of the Amazon for many years. The rainforest, also called the "lungs of the Earth," is regularly subjected to deforestation. Researchers estimate that over 40 years, trees have been cut down from an area nearly the size of Ontario.

The Amazon is a paradise for wild animals, covering around 5.5 million square kilometres of rainforest. It produces 6 to 9 percent of the world's oxygen and is home to many exotic plants. The rainforest territory encompasses parts of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname. Environmentalists and activists have been fighting to preserve the Amazon for decades, advocating for protecting plants and animals. Despite these efforts, company owners, factory owners, and farmers continue deforesting the area to acquire land for profit.

Researchers from the RAISG group (Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network) decided to investigate the scale of Amazon deforestation. Scientists have long been aware of the problem and have often mentioned it during the publication of various studies. Researchers from the Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network attempted to estimate the size of the deforested area over the past 40 years. To this end, they compared satellite images showing the Amazon.

According to researchers, from 1985 to 2023, vegetation has been destroyed on approximately 87 million hectares due to deforestation, or 12.5 percent of the surface of the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon. To understand the phenomenon's scale, activists explain that the deforested area is slightly smaller than Ontario. In the study's description, scientists wrote: “Numerous ecosystems have disappeared to make way for vast pastures, soy fields or other monocultures, or they have been transformed into craters for gold mining.”

The scientists add, "The loss of the forest releases more carbon into the atmosphere, disrupting an entire ecosystem that regulates the climate and the water cycle, which has a clear impact on temperatures."

Sandra Rio Caceres from Peru's Common Good Institute said in an interview with AFP, "With the loss of the forest, we emit more carbon into the atmosphere and this disrupts an entire ecosystem that regulates the climate and the hydrological cycle, clearly affecting temperatures." The researcher added that, in her opinion, the destruction of Amazonian vegetation is partly due to droughts and fires that wreak havoc in South America.