Nearly 40% of the Amazon rainforest areas considered crucial for addressing the climate crisis still lack proper legal protection, with approximately 10.9 million hectares at potential risk, said a report released Thursday.

The analysis, carried out by US-based nonproifit Amazon Conservation, focused on assessing the status of areas with the highest concentration of aboveground carbon, though the lack of protection also puts ecosystems and biodiversity at risk.

Known as ‘peak carbon areas’, these pristine sites hold over 140 metric tons of carbon per hectare.

According to the report, first shared with Reuters on Wednesday, peak carbon areas are concentrated in the southwest and northeast of Amazon, covering around 27.8 mln ha across Peru, Brazil, French Guiana, and Suriname.

To date, protected areas and Indigenous territories cover around 61% of the peak carbon area in the entire rainforest, representing around 16.9 mln ha.

The remaining 39% remains unprotected with no official designation, amounting to nearly 10.9 mln ha arguably threatened by logging and fires.

“The peak carbon areas are often found in the remote primary forests of protected areas and Indigenous territories, but some are located in forestry concessions, specifically logging concessions, or undesignated lands, also referred to as undesignated public forests,” the report said.

“Our goal in this report is to leverage unprecedented aboveground carbon data to reinforce the importance of these designated areas and draw attention to the remaining undesignated lands.”

ACTIONS

The analysis is based on data obtained by Amazon Conservation from satellite company Planet.

“Planet recently released the most up-to-date, precise, and comprehensive (wall-to-wall coverage) aboveground carbon dataset,” Matt Finer, director at Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), told Carbon Pulse.

“The results were so striking and important that we broke the reporting into a series, with this one focusing on peak carbon areas, and specifically how many of them are unprotected or even threatened (in logging concessions).”

According to Finn, what needs to be done now is to develop innovative ways to convert this data into policy actions, compelling governments to protect the remaining peak carbon areas that fall outside protected areas and Indigenous territories.

“One proposal would be, for peak carbon areas in forestry concessions, converting the concessions from logging to conservation concessions, a mechanism that exists in Peru. Or perhaps creating a new class of protected areas based on high carbon. There are lots of possibilities to explore.”

Furthermore, as the report outlined, those unprotected areas can be candidates for the High Integrity Forest (HIFOR) initiative, a recently launched financing instrument that focuses on maintaining intact tropical forests through the market of climate and biodiversity units.

Last year, a report conducted by a group of British and Brazilian researchers showed that deforestation in the Amazon has a more drastic and long-reaching warming effect on non-local land surfaces than previously known.

By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com

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