The planet is getting hotter. And the consequences are becoming harder to ignore.
This summer, heatwaves, drought and wildfires have once again swept across the word. Western Europe has experienced its hottest June and July on record, while fires have forced communities from their homes and destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of land.
These images can make climate change feel overwhelming. But while the challenge is enormous, the story is not simply one of doom and gloom.
Setting aside the responsibility of individual governments and the policies required to accelerate climate action — which is a much broader conversation — it is important to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what we can actually do about it.
The first thing to understand is that these events do not happen in isolation.
Heatwaves and wildfires are natural phenomena and have occurred throughout history. Climate change does not create every individual extreme weather event. What a warming climate does is change the conditions in which they occur.
As average temperatures rise, extreme heat can become more frequent and intense. Higher temperatures can also dry vegetation and soils more quickly, creating conditions in which droughts can deepen and wildfires can spread more easily and become more severe.
At the same time, natural climate cycles continue to influence weather around the world. El Niño, for example, periodically warms parts of the tropical Pacific and can significantly alter rainfall and temperature patterns thousands of kilometres away.
Climate change and natural variability are therefore not the same thing. But natural climate events are now taking place against the backdrop of a warmer planet.
So what can we actually do?
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains fundamental. The transition towards cleaner energy, more efficient transport, lower-carbon industry and more sustainable consumption all matter.
But there is another part of the climate equation that sometimes receives less attention: protecting the natural systems we already have.
Forests are one of them.
Healthy forests absorb and store carbon, but their importance goes far beyond carbon. They regulate water cycles, protect soils, provide habitats for extraordinary biodiversity and support millions of people whose livelihoods depend on them.
When forests disappear, we do not simply lose trees. We weaken an entire natural system.
This is particularly important in places such as the Amazon, where pressure from agriculture, infrastructure, illegal activities and land-use change continues to threaten standing forest.
For those of us working in climate and nature, therefore, the question cannot only be: how do we reduce future emissions?
We must also ask: what can we protect today?
At BAM, this is the question at the heart of what we do in the Peruvian Amazon.
We work to protect standing forests, restore degraded ecosystems and create economic value from keeping nature alive. This includes developing transparent, evidence-based carbon projects that can channel climate finance towards forest conservation, while combining science, technology and long-term collaboration with local communities.
Carbon finance is not a substitute for reducing emissions, nor is forest conservation the only answer to climate change. There is no single solution.
But protecting the natural systems that regulate our climate is an important part of the solution.
The images are a powerful reminder of the scale and urgency of the challenge we face.
They should also remind us that many of the tools we need already exist.
Nature is one of them.
And protecting it is something we can do today.
