Emissions from deforestation and land-use change make up the majority of Peru’s contributions to global warming. In 2015, it is estimated that deforestation and land-use change in Peru contributed 53 million tonnes of carbon emissions to the global atmosphere, and cut down 118,000 hectares of carbon-absorbing trees in the Peruvian Amazon. If left to continue without interruption, the climate impacts could be catastrophic. According to WWF studies to be published later this year on carbon stocks in protected areas of the Peruvian Amazon and its buffer zones, these forests store approximately 6,700 million tonnes of carbon emissions, an amount greater than six times the size of the emissions from the energy sector of the European Union.
