Amazon Tipping Point
The rainforest is approaching the point where it becomes savanna and cannot return.
Severity score
53.2
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Deforestation, fire and drought have pushed parts of the southeastern Amazon into a net carbon source. Beyond an estimated twenty to twenty-five percent deforestation threshold, the forest may no longer generate enough of its own rainfall to sustain itself, with consequences for South American agriculture and global carbon.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
10Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
62People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
58Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
98Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
84Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.