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Amazonian forest degradation must be incorporated into the COP26 agenda

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 634–635 (2021)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Nations will reaffirm their commitment to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26; www.ukcop26.org), in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. Revision of the national commitments will play a key role in defining the future of Earth’s climate. In past conferences, the main target of Amazonian nations was to reduce emissions resulting from land-use change and land management by committing to decrease deforestation rates, a well-known and efficient strategy1,2. However, human-induced forest degradation caused by fires, selective logging, and edge effects can also result in large carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions1,2,3,4,5, which are not yet explicitly reported by Amazonian countries. Despite its considerable impact, forest degradation has been largely overlooked in previous policy discussions5. It is vital that forest degradation is considered in the upcoming COP26 discussions and incorporated into future commitments to reduce GHG emissions.

Quantifying the carbon losses attributable to degradation processes is a difficult task. There are considerable uncertainties associated with degraded-forest area estimates and how each type of disturbance affects carbon fluxes. These uncertainties, however, can be reduced by combining field measurements7,10 with an ever-increasing array of remote-sensing datasets and methods that since 20055 have enhanced our capacity to perform large-scale monitoring of degradation processes across both space and time dimensions1,2,3,4,8,9. Improved spatio-temporal estimates of forest degradation can provide valuable information to better identify and quantify degradation-related carbon emissions. More accurate and realistic models would benefit not only the Brazilian Amazon, but also other tropical forests, directly supporting Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) activities to boost the reduction of emissions worldwide.

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Fig. 1: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (that is, forest fires and edge effects) within the Brazilian Amazon.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. N.S.C., A.C.M.P., J.B.C.R, P.M.F. and L.E.O.C.A. thank the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for funding (processes 140379/2018-5, 140877/2018-5, 301597/2020-0, 311103/2015-4 and 305054/2016-3, respectively). A.P.-L. thanks the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP; process 2016/21043-8) for funding. V.H. was supported by a NERC GW4+ Doctoral Training Partnership studentship from the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/L002434/1). D.M.L. acknowledges funding from FAPESP (2015/02537-7) and from the AIMES (Analysis, Integration and Modelling of the Earth System) programme. A.A., C.S. and P.B. were funded by Global Wildlife Conservation (grant no. 5282.019-0285) and Climate Land Use Alliance (G-2010-57219). E.B. and J.B. were funded by the UK Research and Innovation (NE/S01084X/1) and the BNP Paribas Foundation (Bioclimate). J.F., E.B. and J.B. thank CNPq for funding (processes 441573/2020-7, 441659/2016-0, 441949/2018-5, and 420254/2018-8). L.O.A. thanks the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI; process SGP-HW 016), the CNPq (processes 441949/2018-5 and 442650/2018-3), and FAPESP (processes 2016/02018-2, 2019/05440-5, and 2018/14423-4) for funding. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This Correspondence presents the personal views of the authors based on their scientific expertise but is not aimed at representing the official positions of their own organizations. Portuguese and Spanish versions of this Correspondence are provided at https://github.com/celsohlsj/ngeo_correspondence.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Celso H. L. Silva Junior, Nathália S. Carvalho, Ana C. M. Pessôa.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tropical Ecosystems and Environmental Sciences Laboratory (TREES), São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil

    Celso H. L. Silva Junior, Nathália S. Carvalho, Ana C. M. Pessôa, João B. C. Reis, Aline Pontes-Lopes, Juan Doblas, Wesley Campanharo, Henrique Cassol, Yosio E. Shimabukuro, Liana O. Anderson & Luiz E. O. C. Aragão

  2. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil

    Celso H. L. Silva Junior, Nathália S. Carvalho, Ana C. M. Pessôa, Aline Pontes-Lopes, Juan Doblas, Wesley Campanharo, Henrique Cassol, Luciana Gatti, Ana P. Aguiar, Yosio E. Shimabukuro & Luiz E. O. C. Aragão

  3. Universidade Estadual do Maranhão (UEMA), São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil

    Celso H. L. Silva Junior

  4. Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais (CEMADEN), São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil

    João B. C. Reis & Liana O. Anderson

  5. University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Viola Heinrich & Joanna House

  6. Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM), Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil

    Ane Alencar, Camila Silva & Paulo Brando

  7. Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    David M. Lapola

  8. Ecología del Paisaje y Modelación de Ecosistemas (ECOLMOD), Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL), Bogota, Colombia

    Dolors Armenteras

  9. Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil

    Eraldo A. T. Matricardi

  10. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Erika Berenguer

  11. Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Camila Silva, Erika Berenguer & Jos Barlow

  12. South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA

    Izaya Numata

  13. Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA) Amazônia Oriental, Belém, Pará, Brazil

    Joice Ferreira

  14. University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Paulo Brando

  15. Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA

    Paulo Brando

  16. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

    Philip M. Fearnside

  17. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, USA

    Sassan Saatchi

  18. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Sassan Saatchi

  19. Universidade Federal do Acre (UFAC), Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, Brazil

    Sonaira Silva

  20. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Stephen Sitch & Luiz E. O. C. Aragão

  21. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ana P. Aguiar

  22. School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Carlos A. Silva

  23. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, VA, Italy

    Christelle Vancutsem, Frédéric Achard & René Beuchle

  24. Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia

    Christelle Vancutsem

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Correspondence to Celso H. L. Silva Junior.

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Peer review information Nature Geoscience thanks Gregory Asner for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Silva Junior, C.H.L., Carvalho, N.S., Pessôa, A.C.M. et al. Amazonian forest degradation must be incorporated into the COP26 agenda. Nat. Geosci. 14, 634–635 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00823-z

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