Amazon forests are no longer acting as a carbon sink

The biggest rainforest in the world, Amazon forests have started emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of absorbing carbon emissions.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021

A significant amount of deforestation in eastern and southeastern Brazil has turned the forest into a source of CO2 that has the ability to warm the planet.

Not only the Amazon rainforests, some forests in Southeast Asia have also turned into carbon sources in the last few years as a result of formation of plantations and fires.

The Amazon basin is huge with an area covering over 6 million square kilometres, it is nearly twice the size of India.

The Amazon rainforests cover about 80 per cent of the basin and as per NASA’s Earth observatory, they are home to nearly a fifth of the world’s land species and is also home to about 30 million people including hundreds of indigenous groups and several isolated tribes.