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The Amazon rainforest and five reasons for hope

Slowing deforestation in Brazil and pledges to ban oil drilling in Colombia offer slivers of hope for the Amazon.

Frog_Brazil_Rainforest_Indigenous_Rights
After a year of record heat and fires, falling deforestation, new Indigenous land protections and regional policy shifts are offering cautious signs of recovery for the Amazon rainforest – even as fresh oil drilling plans raise alarm. Image: Patricio Gaibor, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Unsplash.
Thomson Reuters Foundation
3 minute read

Amid all the bad climate news, the Amazon rainforest - the world’s largest tropical forest - is teasing out some hope.

After record-setting temperatures, drought and wildfires in 2024, last year saw greater rainfall across Brazil and fewer trees burned.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used the COP30 United Nations climate summit, held in November in the Amazon city of Belém, to formally recognise Indigenous territories and commit to protecting new areas of the rainforest.

More good news for the Amazon came at the summit when Colombia declared its share of the rainforest an oil-free zone.

Humans have few more precious tools to combat a fast-warming planet than the Amazon, which spans nine nations and is home to nearly 50 million people, including 2 million Indigenous people.

Brazil slows Amazon deforestation

Scientists say climate change, deforestation and fires are all pushing Amazon forests towards “tipping points” that threaten to alter the forest irreparably.

Lula has vowed to reinstate environmental protections and reach net-zero deforestation by 2030 in the country with the biggest share of the Amazon.

Tree clearance in Brazil declined 11 per cent to its lowest level since 2014, according to government data in the 12 months through July.

Yet some 5,796 square km (2,237 square miles) of Brazil’s Amazon were still lost in the period.

Indigenous territories recognised

At COP30, Lula signed decrees recognising four Indigenous territories totalling 2.45 million hectares (6 million acres) which legally protects them from farming, mining and logging projects.

Brazil had also made administrative progress towards recognising another 4.5 million hectares, much of it in the Amazon, according to Instituto Socioambiental, an Indigenous rights group.

At COP30, 15 nations, signed the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment to recognise land rights across 80 million hectares where Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other local communities live in tropical forests by 2030.

It also calls for the strengthening of land rights for another 80 million hectares already formally controlled by such communities.

A body of research shows that recognising and protecting Indigenous lands is a key way to preserve the forest.

Funding boost

At COP30, the Forest Tenure Funders Group (FTFG), formed by Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and 35 charities, pledged to secure US$1.8 billion to help communities living in the Amazon, in savannahs, near mangroves and in other sensitive ecosystems secure land rights and conservation.

Forest agencies of Peru and Ecuador also pledged at COP30 to boost fire prevention efforts as stronger, more frequent blazes occur.

Called the Wildfire Action Accelerator, a pledge to secure US$100 million by 2030 was signed by more than three dozen environmental and Indigenous groups worldwide and will initially focus on the Amazon basin.

Amazon drilling

Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras got the green light to drill near the mouth of the Amazon River to prospect for oil in October.

The Federal Prosecution Office in December requested the license be suspended because it lacked a plan to compensate fishermen.

Environmentalists have said the drilling could lead to large-scale extraction in the area and dozens of other fields leased to Petrobras and international companies that are undergoing licensing processes.

Legislation passed last year lifts environmental protections in sensitive areas and fast-tracks licensing for projects the government deems strategic.

A network of Indigenous groups and a leftwing political party have sued at the Supreme Court to stop the new rules.

In the meantime, Colombia became the first nation to prohibit oil drilling and large-scale mining across its entire Amazon territory.

At COP30, Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres declared the Colombian Amazon a “reserve zone for renewable natural resources.”

The government also defended a ban on fracking and imposed stricter rules for exploration and production of conventional oil and gas, including offshore drilling.

This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.

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