Why Rainforests?
Our greatest defence against environmental crisis.
Rising temperatures, extreme weather events and soaring extinction rates are exerting immense pressure on our planet’s health.
Rainforests are perhaps our greatest defence in securing the health of the planet and its people. Their role as climate regulators, storing moisture, carbon and heat, is vital in our effort to tackle the climate crisis. Trees remain our only proven, large scale technology to sequester carbon and natural intact rainforests are able to absorb a significant share of all human induced greenhouse gases.
Rainforests are also home to some of the greatest diversity of animal and plant species on land. They contain up to 50% of all plants and animals and are critical to global water cycles. They support the livelihoods of over a billion people, are key to our global food system and essential to the discovery of new medicines, as well as playing a role in reducing the potential for future zoonotic pandemics.
But rainforests remain under protected, under pressure, and under studied. It is estimated that a seismic tipping point in rainforest’s ability to take in carbon is nearing. Projections suggest the Amazonian carbon sink could effectively stop operating as early as 2035 – flipping from a sink of carbon into a source of climate warming emissions with devastating consequence if action is not taken.
Rainforests are being lost at an alarming rate.
A fifth of the Amazon rainforest has been wiped out in the past 50 years. In Indonesia the drive for commodities like palm oil has devastated up to half of its rainforest and the forests of the Congo Basin are under increasing pressures.
These losses are devastating and potentially irrecoverable. If tropical deforestation were a country, it would rank third in carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions behind only China and the US.
Without rainforests we lose one of our greatest defences against climate change, countless undiscovered medicines as well as hundreds of endangered and endemic plants and animals and the livelihoods of millions of people across the planet.
Source | Global Forest Watch (2020)
Steps needed to protect our rainforests:
Recognise their value
We must shift from seeing rainforests as a resource from which to extract, towards an asset we need to sustain. Their value as carbon storage, biodiversity hotspots, livelihood supporters, fresh water recyclers and so much more must be better valued.
Support land rights
80% of global biodiversity is in community and indigenous land. Yet land rights remain challenged and limited. Indigenous groups are some of the best environmental stewards so supporting their rights and autonomy can help ensure rainforest protection.
Enforce global protections
The shift towards protecting a greater share of high biodiversity areas such as rainforests is welcome. Yet commitments need to be enforceable and fully resourced. Currently just 3% of all climate finance is directed towards forests and land use efforts.
