The impact of climate change plus deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 percent of the Amazon forest by 2030 - making it impossible to keep global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels, an environmental group said yesterday.

"The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed," said Daniel Nepstad, author of a new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released at a UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature, but also such a large source of fresh water that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that, it's a massive store of carbon."