The fragile Amazon rainforest: between deforestation and climate change, what do we risk?

The Amazon rainforest, known as the “green lung” of our planet, is going through an unprecedented crisis. Its future is threatened by a two-pronged assault: intensive deforestation and rising temperatures linked to climate change. These factors are pushing the Amazon ecosystem toward a point of no return, with potentially devastating consequences for global biodiversity, the climate, and the human communities that have always depended on this land.

• Deforestation and climate change: a dangerous mix
• How deforestation affects rainfall
• Social and economic impacts affecting everyone
• The Amazon as a global climate regulator
• What does all this mean for our relationship with nature?

Deforestation and climate change: a dangerous mix

In recent years, tropical forest loss has reached alarming levels. Between 2015 and 2020, the Earth lost an average of about 10 million hectares of forest per year, mainly due to agricultural expansion, mining, and illegal logging. The Amazon is one of the hardest-hit areas, and its situation is particularly alarming.

Recent scientific studies, such as Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system published in Nature, indicate that by 2050, nearly half of the Amazon rainforest could undergo an ecosystem collapse, losing its ability to support living species and carry out essential ecological processes.

How deforestation affects rainfall

A crucial aspect concerns the way deforestation alters the natural water cycle. Amazonian vegetation, in fact, plays a fundamental role in evaporation and in returning moisture to the atmosphere, fueling local rainfall.

The reduction of forest cover leads to a decrease in this evaporation, which, especially during the dry season, leads to a lack of moisture and therefore a decrease in rainfall. Conversely, during the rainy season, the warming of the soil caused by the lack of vegetation can generate low-pressure areas, increasing rainfall locally but worsening drought elsewhere.

These imbalances exacerbate the stress on the ecosystem, making droughts and floods more frequent and intense.

Social and economic impacts affecting everyone

The repercussions of the Amazon crisis go far beyond the loss of trees. Local agriculture, the main source of income for many communities, suffers from reduced water availability and climate variability. Hydroelectric power, which covers about 65% of Brazil's electricity needs, is also at risk due to changes in water flows.

Furthermore, the Amazon rainforest plays a key role in the global carbon balance. It is, in fact, a massive reservoir that stores tens of billions of tons of carbon. However, as the ecosystem deteriorates, vast areas that were once carbon sinks are no longer able to counteract global warming.

The Amazon as a global climate regulator

One often underestimated element is that the Amazon rainforest is not just a large biodiversity reserve, but an active climate system, capable of influencing the climate far beyond the borders of South America. Through the process of evapotranspiration, billions of trees release enormous amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere every day, contributing to the formation of so-called “moisture rivers” that fuel rainfall over vast areas of the continent. This mechanism makes the Amazon a fundamental cog in the global water cycle.

When forest cover is fragmented, this balance weakens. The loss of vegetation not only reduces the forest's ability to generate rain, but also increases the surface temperature of the soil, making the environment drier and more vulnerable to fires. In recent years, exceptional periods of drought have alternated with intense and concentrated rainfall, signs of an increasingly unstable system.

Making the situation even more critical is the fact that many areas of the Amazon are already showing a reduced capacity to absorb carbon. In some areas, the combination of deforestation, water stress, and high temperatures is transforming the forest from an ally in the fight against climate change into a factor that contributes to fueling it. This transition does not happen uniformly, but in a patchy manner, making it even harder to predict the future evolution of the ecosystem.

Understanding this complexity is essential because it highlights a key point: natural ecosystems only function as long as they can maintain a balance between available resources and climatic conditions. When this balance breaks, the consequences are inevitable.

What does all this mean for our relationship with nature?

This emergency highlights how essential it is to rethink our relationship with the environment, starting with the management of greenery in our homes and cities. Choosing resilient plants, capable of adapting to increasingly difficult climatic conditions, and adopting sustainable cultivation techniques are small but fundamental steps toward helping to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Protecting the Amazon rainforest also means protecting the global climate and the resources we all use. Every conscious green choice, from the nursery to the urban garden, represents an important contribution to the fight against global warming and the safeguarding of our planet.