3 reasons for hope for the Amazon

When U.S. President Joseph Biden meets with Brazil’s newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in Washington this week, climate change and the fate of the Amazon will be one of the many items of discussion, according to news reports. 

There’s much to talk about: The world’s largest rainforest, 60 percent of which lies inside Brazil’s borders, saw an uptick in deforestation in recent years — pushing the Amazon biome ever closer to the dreaded “tipping point” at which the entire ecosystem would shift irrevocably to dry savannah. 

But there’s good news — in the form of three efforts under way that are aimed at halting the destruction of the most important stretch of forests on Earth. 

1. Regrowing the forest: A bold initiative to regrow 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon has made progress despite unexpected setbacks, according to an upcoming report. 

The initiative, launched in 2017 to much fanfare, has delivered almost 20 percent of its forest restoration target, according to Conservation International in Brazil, one of several partners involved…