The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20 per cent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last decade than it absorbed, according to a report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world’s largest tropical forest to help absorb man-made carbon pollution.

From 2010 through 2019, Brazil’s Amazon basin gave off 16.6 billion tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9 billion tonnes, researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.