When I was a kid, I watched documentaries on PBS that talked about the importance of protecting rainforests. (Yeah, I was a nerdy kid who liked educational TV!) That instinctively made sense to me – I’d seethose beautiful landscapes and interesting animals, and of course I wanted them to be safe always.
But the part I thought was really cool was how the local people lived in the rainforest – mainly because it looked like fun to move around your neighborhood on rafts instead of on land. Now I realize that’s not actually the case in every rainforest or in all seasons…but when you’ve only got a few years under your belt you miss some of the finer details.
Well, I’m a bit older now, but I’ve learned my initial instincts were sound…and also learned more about why rainforest conservation is so important. Here are the facts:
- Deforestation is the second largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions today, following only the power generation sector; it accounts for almost 20% of those emissions, or twice the emissions from all the world’s cars, trucks, and airplanes combined
- Tropical deforestation in developing countries is responsible for nearly all (96%) of the emissions from deforestation
- Forests protect water and soil quality and provide livelihoods for over 1.6 billion people around the world; many of them are the world’s poorest people in Africa, South America and Asia
- But less than 5% of tropical forests are managed sustainably, putting these livelihoods at risk
- Tropical forests play a critical role in protecting unique animals and plants you can’t find anywhere else in the world
Yet incentives to prevent deforestation were somehow not included in the Kyoto Protocol. You might wonder why the protocol didn’t address this if it’s so important.
To paint it in simple strokes: Developing nations wanted compensation for not cutting down their rainforests. After all, they argue,if they’re giving up income from forestry and logging, they should be able to make up the lost funds in another way. But industrialized nations didn’t want to pay developing nations for “doing nothing.” So they reached an impasse.
It’s our hope that future international agreements will incorporate effective action to reduce deforestation. In the meantime, we’ve been seeking to do our part by partnering with Conservation International to protect the Sovi Basin. Now, we obviously don’t treat the Sovi Basin project as an “offset,” because it’s already there – we didn’t plant it. But we knew the benefits the Sovi Basin would provide to Fiji and the rest of the world – shelter for unique species, watershed protection, erosion control, and carbon sequestration – werebenefits we wanted to ensure forever.
And hopefully I’ll get to ride on a raft in the rainforestfor real one of these days…whee!
To learn more about conservation and reforestation efforts going on around the world, check out Conservation International’s web site.
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