The Amazon basin’s forest will lose 2.1 million square kilometers of its 5.3 million km2 by 2050 if current development trends go unabated, according to a new projection. However, aggressive policy changes could prevent deforestation on 1.3 million km2 of the threatened area, scientists report in the March 23 Nature.
Last week, at the eighth United Nations conference on biodiversity in Curitiba, Brazil, the Brazilian government announced that it now protects nearly 800,000 km2 of Amazonian forest and has beaten a 2012 deadline for achieving that goal.
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