Greeny News

saving forests offers a new way to fight against hunger and malnutrition, the promotion of development and the fight against climate change

Although forests once provided livelihoods for local people for generations to clear the forest was also good for business, the overall immediate food security for the world. In short, the forests were worth more dead than alive.

As the population increases, emerging economies and industrialized countries are in search of three major forest regions of the world - the three basins of the Congo, the Amazon and Southeast Asia - resources for your growing needs. The economic imperative to acquire more land and clean each day increases the demand for food and raw materials increases. More than half of the loss of forests worldwide took place in the three basins. But global food production must untapped permanent forest trees.

and forests are not on the food as they protect local communities against catastrophic flooding and erosion in the rainy season .. The forests of the three basins act as large carbon capture and storage units, the development of approximately 10% of annual greenhouse gas emissions each year. They are the main defense of the planet against climate change - a fact that is often lost in the midst of a debate on climate change that focuses almost exclusively on fossil fuels. The destruction of forests for our unstable and unpredictable climate, with increasing desert areas and extreme weather conditions. Instead, over the use of forests in the three basins has enormous potential to limit future damage from climate change.

Obviously, we need to stop affect forests in the world, but it is not as easy as it sounds. In the same way that fossil fuels are deeply rooted in the way countries develop, so it is a model of centuries of land use in which the forest land is considered a resource to be exploited. Stop the destruction of the forest during the night is not possible or desirable, as it would make the price and availability of food and other rockets.

However, it is possible to find a balance. Brazil already shows what is possible. By reducing deforestation by two thirds since 2004, Brazil has avoided 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions - not many people know that it is a greater reduction in emissions than any other country. This has not been achieved at the expense of economic growth: at the same time, Brazil has lifted 10 million people out of poverty and continues to supply the world with food such as meat and soy, and other resources. My own country, Guyana, holds 99.5% of our forests, while significant investments in new economic sectors that pressure on forests in the long term. Many other countries with forests in the three basins are ready to act. Proposals have been made national ambition. Many, including Vietnam, Gabon and Republic of Congo have detailed plans in which, supported by a high-level political commitment.

If countries are ready to act: the way we deliver development, reduce poverty and advance the number of people more, while protecting the climate? The challenge is to invest in a new model of land use which addresses the causes of the disappearance of forests, develop alternative sources of income and employment for forest communities, and addresses the growing demand for food safety This means untie global poverty reduction and economic growth of deforestation, the same way the world is beginning to decouple economic growth from the use of fossil fuels. But it is difficult and expensive - and all the benefits they have to participate in the payment of valuable services that forests provide. We need to make forests worth more alive than dead.