Amazon Monitoring

- While polls show former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead in the upcoming elections, far-right ideology persists in the Amazon region.- Bolsonaro’s allies lead the polls for governor in five of the nine Amazon states: Acre, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Roraima and Amazonas.- In all Amazonian states, polls indicate that the two presidential candidates are tied, in contrast to national polls.- Experts say that even if most states choose right-wing governors, the federal government will determine the future of the Amazon rainforest.

- A groundbreaking study using satellite data and an artificial intelligence algorithm shows how the spread of unofficial roads throughout the Amazon is driving widespread deforestation.- One such road is on the verge of cutting across the Xingu Socioenvironmental Corridor, posing a serious risk of helping push the Amazon beyond a crucial tipping point.- Unprotected public lands account for 25% of the total illegal road network, with experts saying the creation of more protected areas could stem the spread and slow both deforestation and land grabs.- Officially sanctioned roads, such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway, also need better planning to minimize their impact and prevent the growth of illegal offshoots, experts say.

- Scientists warn that the Amazon is approaching a tipping point beyond which it would begin to transition from a lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna. This point may be reached when 25% of the forest is lost.- In a newly released report, the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) estimates that 13.2% of the original Amazon forest biome has been lost due to deforestation and other causes.- However, when the map is divided into thirds, it shows that 31% of the eastern Amazon has been lost. Moisture cycles through the forest from east to west, creating up to half of all rainfall across the Amazon. The 31% figure is critical, the report says, “because the tipping point will likely be triggered in the east.”- Experts say the upcoming elections in Brazil could have dramatic consequences for the Amazon, and to avert the tipping point we must lower emissions, undertake ambitious reforestation projects, and build an economy based on the standing forest. Granting and honoring Indigenous land tenure and protected areas are also key strategies.

- Up to 50% of rainfall in the Amazon comes from the forest itself, as moisture is recycled from the trees to the atmosphere.- In severe droughts, when the forest loses more water to evaporation than it receives from rain, the trees begin to die. For every three trees that die due to drought in the Amazon rainforest, a fourth tree, even if not directly affected by drought, will also die, according to a new study.- As trees are lost and the forest dries up, parts of the Amazon will rapidly approach a tipping point, where they will transition into a degraded savanna-like ecosystem with few to no trees.- The southern and southeastern Amazon are the most vulnerable regions to tipping. Here, deforestation and fires are at their most extreme, driven largely by cattle ranching and soy farming.

- Imports of 14 types of commodities into the European Union will soon have to be verified for possible association with deforestation in the countries in which they were produced.- That’s the key provision in a bill passed on Sept. 13 by the European Parliament, which initially targeted soy, beef, palm oil, timber, cocoa, and coffee, but now also includes pork, lamb and goat meat, as well as poultry, corn, rubber, charcoal, and printed paper.- The bill still needs the approval of the Council of the EU and the national parliaments of the 27 countries in the bloc, but is already considered a historic step against deforestation.- In Brazil, experts have welcomed the bill as a means of tackling the demand-side pressures driving increasing levels of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, while the agribusiness lobby has denounced it as unfair.