Spurred by the growing urgency of catastrophic environmental threats to the Amazon, a group of 150 renowned scientists from eight Amazonian countries, French Guiana and global partners today formally launched a scientific initiative that is tasked with delivering the first scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon Basin. Their recommendations will suggest a blueprint for policy making in a vulnerable region whose leaders have promised to save the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest.
The Science Panel for the Amazon will produce the first scientific review to cover the entire Amazon basin and its biomes-- to be released in 2021. Sponsored by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the launch of the Science Panel was attended by a group of strategic advisors, including Juan Manuel Santos, the former President of Colombia, and other political leaders; cultural icons like famed photographer Sebastiäo Salgado, and José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, elected leader of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon.
The pace of deforestation in the Amazon, coupled with last year’s devastating forest fires, has pushed the world’s largest rainforest close to a tipping point.
“Our message to political leaders is that there is no time to waste,” said Carlos Nobre, Co-Chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon. “The current development model is fueling deforestation and biodiversity loss, leading to devastating and irreversible change. If the Amazon is to survive, we must show how it can be transformed to generate economic and environmental benefits that would be the result of collaborations between scientists, Indigenous knowledge holders and their leaders, and governments.”
