There is a short window of opportunity and there is potential for recovery, but we cannot afford to be complacent
-Toby Gardner
The numbers associated with the Amazon are truly staggering. It encompasses nine countries; contains at least a tenth of the known species in the world; provides a home and resources to 31 million people; stores the equivalent amount of carbon to a decade of human-induced emissions for the entire planet; and discharges a fifth of the world’s fresh water.
However, rapid social and ecological change, borne on the back of deforestation, harvesting of natural resources and a changing climate, has left the future of the world’s largest remaining tropical forest uncertain – Amazonia, today, is “standing at a crossroads”, as Dr Toby Gardner describes.
He points to the existence of tough trade-offs that underpin the region’s challenges: “The demand for land and natural resources is driven by the development needs of one of the world’s largest emerging economies, as well as by the insatiable global food and commodities market. Understanding what management practices can best achieve both economic development and environmental conservation is central to addressing this challenge and shepherding the creation of a more sustainable Amazon.”
Gardner leads a new research programme that is motivated by helping to solve this dilemma – the Sustainable Amazon Network – alongside colleagues at Lancaster University, the Goeldi Museum in Belém (Brazil) and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), with funding from the Brazilian and UK governments and The Nature Conservancy, among others.
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Image Credit: Toby Gardner
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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