WWF Says Warming Puts Amazon Region at Risk

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- The impact of climate change plus deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 percent of the Amazon forest by 2030 - making it impossible to keep global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels, an environmental group said Thursday.

Several recent studies have suggested similar findings, but scientists say the size and complexity of the Amazon leaves many questions about the rain forest's future open to debate. Brazil's Environment Ministry did not respond this week to a request for comment.

"The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed," said Daniel Nepstad, author of a new report by the World Wide Fund For Nature released at the U.N. climate change conference in Bali.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature, but also such a large source of fresh water that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that, it's a massive store of carbon."

Sprawling over 1.6 million square miles, the Amazon covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil. Largely unexplored, it contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water and about 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species - many still undiscovered.



According to the WWF, deforestation in the Amazon could result in 55.5 billion to 96.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide being released into the environment by 2030, representing as much as two years of global carbon emissions.

(By Michael Casey, AP Environmental Writer, shortened for this bog)