Climate change
Drought, fires and deforestation battered Amazon rainforest in 2024
A second year of record drought contributed to wildfires that worsened deforestation across the massive forest, which spans Brazil, Peru, Colombia and other Latin American nations and is a critical counterweight to climate change.
By Steven Grattan | Associated Press •
Published 4 hours ago •
Updated 2 hours ago
NBCUniversal Media, LLC
2024 was a brutal year for the Amazon rainforest, with rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaging large parts of a biome that’s a critical counterweight to climate change.
A warming climate fed drought that in turn fed the worst year for fires since 2005. And those fires contributed to deforestation, with authorities suspecting some fires were set to more easily clear land to run cattle.
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The Amazon is twice the size of India and sprawls across eight countries and one territory, storing vast amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the planet. It has about 20% of the world’s fresh water and astounding biodiversity, including 16,000 known tree species. But governments have historically viewed it as an area to be exploited, with little regard for sustainability or the rights of its Indigenous peoples, and experts say exploitation by individuals and organized crime is rising at alarming rates.
“The fires and drought experienced in 2024 across the Amazon rainforest could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point,” said Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, an organization that works to protect the rainforest. “Humanity’s window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but still open.”
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There were some bright spots. The level of Amazonian forest loss fell in both Brazil and Colombia. And nations gathered for the annual United Nations conference on biodiversity agreed to give Indigenous peoples more say in nature conservation decisions.
“If the Amazon rainforest is to avoid the tipping point, Indigenous people will have been a determinant factor,” Miller said.
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