World leaders – or at least about 50 of them – flew away from preliminary Cop meetings in the Amazonian city of Belém last week, where they met to discuss the climate crisis, the ravages committed on the planet’s biggest rainforest only too apparent beneath them, if they chose to look.
Deforestation, drought and the climate crisis are pushing the Amazon to what could become a “tipping point”, where it changes state from a rainforest to a savannah ecosystem, and from a massive absorber of carbon to releasing carbon into the atmosphere, which would have devastating consequences for the whole world.
