Brazil’s many unique creatures, from a tiny orange frog to the sauá monkey, could face a bleak future if global warming exceeds the temperature targets set in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, scientists have warned.
Even if temperatures were later lowered below the 1.5°C to 2°C warming threshold — sucking carbon out of the air, for example — the damage would be irreversible, according to a study published this week.
As emissions continue to rapidly increase towards these limits — and climate action is lacking — “overcoming scenarios” are being considered, said Andreas Meyer, co-author of the report from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and University College London ( UCL).
It would typically be a period of excessive warming lasting several decades and using “carbon dioxide removal” technology — not yet fully developed or possible at scale — to try to reverse dangerous temperature rises by 2100, the study said.
Extremely controversial “geoengineering” techniques, such as blocking some of the sunlight reaching the planet by spraying reflective particles into the upper atmosphere or installing space mirrors, are also being researched as potential means of limiting fatal temperature rises.
But any period of excess temperature would likely cause enormous damage to biodiversity and ecosystems around the world, according to the study’s scientists.
“There is no magic solution if we go beyond the limits of the Paris Agreement. It is a fallacy that this could be resolved later,” said Meyer, who is a researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in Africa. southern.
“It is very likely that irreversible impacts will be suffered in the meantime,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The study was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences just a day after negotiations for a global deal to stem the loss of nature failed ahead of a UN biodiversity summit in December.
‘No panacea’
The research found that Brazil — which is home to most of the Amazon — would likely be particularly at risk of heat waves in a scenario that exceeds two degrees Celsius.
Meyer said this could lead to “the replacement of forests with fields” and, ultimately, the loss of a vital system for absorbing excess carbon dioxide emissions and preventing climate change.
The Amazon basin has lost about a fifth of its original forests, and scientists warn that increasing deforestation under Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is pushing the rainforest to a 20% to 25% tipping point. losses.
At that point, the rainforest will likely dry up and become savannah, accelerating the impacts of climate change, including species extinction, they say.
Today, one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction — more than ever before in human history. In the Amazon alone, more than 10,000 species are at risk of disappearing due to deforestation for cattle ranching, soy cultivation and other uses.
The new study looked at more than 30,000 species worldwide, using a simulation in which global temperature rise would exceed 2 degrees Celsius between 2041 and 2102.
In such a situation, the research found that 728 species from the Amazon region and other Brazilian ecosystems would be exposed to unsafe temperatures. To avoid such scenarios, some experts have argued that carbon dioxide removal technologies should be prioritized as a solution.
A report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found in April that extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will now be key to achieving the Paris Agreement targets, as global emissions continue to rise. increase.
However, study co-author Joanne Bentley said that removal technologies as well as nature-based solutions such as planting more trees that absorb carbon dioxide include risks of their own and cannot reverse biodiversity loss.
“It is important to realize that there is no panacea to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” said Bentley, who also participates in UCT’s African Climate and Development Initiative.
“If we exceed 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, we could pay dearly in terms of loss of biodiversity, compromising the provision of ecosystem services on which we all depend,” he added.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
