Forests
The challenges
Forests are home to an enormous 80% of the world’s land biodiversity, including a mindblowing array of trees, plants, animals, birds, insects and fungi working together in complex ecosystems that support the finely balanced survival of all living things, including us.
Covering a third of global land area, they are a vital pillar of the climate conditions that favor life as we know it. Deforestation therefore spells disaster for life on this planet.
The calamitous effect of destroying forests is even further exacerbated due to the fact that, since forests also store carbon, that very destruction releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere– the very gasses that accelerate climate change itself.
Knowing this, and facing such pressing issues with our climate- why are forests still being destroyed?
The answer, in all cases, is money.
In the Amazon- rainforest is cleared so that farmers can rear cattle for meat and dairy, or grow soya for animal feed.
In Indonesia and the Congo- lucrative palm oil plantations are the key motivation.
And in the Great Northern Forest, logging companies fell trees for household cosmetic products like tissue paper.
The facts
The world could run out of rain forests in 2100
Forests absorb almost one-third of the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels every year – around 2.6 billion tonnes.
Since 1990, it is estimated that 420 million hectares of forest have been destroyed.
The rate of deforestation slowed between 2015 and 2020, at an average of 10 million hectares per year, down from 16 million hectares per year since 1990.
Indigenous Peoples all over the world depend on forests – and that land represents some of the best-protected and most biodiverse regions in the world.
Protecting forests also safeguards these unique pockets of human cultural diversity from extinction. Once those ancient ways of life and conservational wisdom are lost, there’s no getting them back.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommend 1 billion hectares of forests are planted by 2050.
Data suggests that replanting and reforestation projects could do it within 30 years.
The Paris Agreement on climate change also included initiatives for the protection of forests including the REDD+ framework, which offers funding for forest protection efforts. REDD+ has about a billion USD a year for forest protection projects- about $8 billion from 2000 to 2008.
BUT…
In the same period, almost 100 times that amount – $777 billion – was used for financing agriculture and investments that put forests at risk.
Tesco: take a stand on Amazon fires
Tesco, is knowingly selling us meat and dairy linked to forest destruction in the Amazon and other regions of Brazil. Tell Tesco to drop forest destroyers from its supply chain in order to protect forests, our health, wildlife, and the planet.
Greenpeace are calling on Tesco to drop forest destroyers immediately and get out of factory farming, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help to demand that Tesco put people over profits, and protect globally important biomes like the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal.
