Trees For Tomorrow

Whether a deciduous, coniferous, rain or dry forest, a healthy forest is maintained by a delicate balancing act of give and take.

Forests are fundamental to the fight against climate change. They produce oxygen, store carbon and are home to millions of animals and people. Forests help regulate weather patterns, prevent flooding and erosion, and provide food, water and shelter. They also provide oxygen, store CO₂ and, oceans aside, have the greatest biodiversity on the planet. Tropical rainforests harbour 90% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity.

Yet forests are disappearing at an alarming rate - 14 million hectares per annum (source: FAO).

Deforestation and degradation of forests is being drivien by unsustainable utilisation of forest resources.

Due to the irreversibility of species extinction and habitat loss, this rampant depletion of our biodiversity exerts a terrible toll on both the natural and economic worlds -- affecting both current and future generations.

Conversion to intensive agriculture, shifting cultivation, poaching and the trade in bushmeat, together with unsustainable illegal industrial and informal logging, mining, unsustainable palm oil production and oil extraction all reduce forest cover and destroy biodiversity.

Population growth, immigration, the demand for higher standards of living and increasing demand at the global level for forest and extractive industry products (wood, diamonds, metals used in aluminium smelting and mobile phones).

We must maintain forests so that they continue to ensure biodiversity and play their role as the lungs of the earth for future generations.