The Future of the Rainforest is our Future too

Send your Rainforest SOS to the World and Help Create a Climate for Change

The rainforests are a rich, green belt that surrounds the world at the equator and contain over half the living plant and animal species on the planet. Some people have described these forests as the ‘Earth’s lifebelt’ and you can see why. Without their services in storing greenhouse gases, creating oxygen and rainfall, and providing a home to the most important array of biodiversity on the planet, our Earth would be a very different place and certainly one uninhabitable by mankind.

Vast quantities of carbon are stored in the trees and soils of tropical forest areas. When they are burned and cleared this is converted into carbon dioxide which helps to accelerate climate change. Recent estimates say that some 17 per cent of greenhouse gases come from deforestation. Tropical rainforests are also removing about 15 per cent of the carbon dioxide we are releasing. Clearing the rainforests thus creates a double whammy for the climate – it creates a source of emissions, and at the same time removes a vast natural sink.

While the world struggles with emissions from transport, energy and industry, political attention on the tropical forests has been somewhat limited. This must change. If we are to meet the target set out by the major economies at the G8 summit in July to limit global average temperature increase to below 2 degrees compared with the pre-industrial average, then forest loss must be urgently reduced.

For several decades the international community has wrestled with the complex challenge of deforestation. But this has not achieved the level of success now demanded by the climate change science. A new approach is thus needed to complement the many positive, but evidently insufficient, efforts presently underway. It is necessary to change the economics of deforestation, to make the trees worth more alive than dead.

One way to do this is to provide countries with clear financial incentives through payments made in relation to their performance in cutting deforestation (or not starting it in the first place). How best to do this is now the subject of negotiations feeding into the climate change summit at Copenhagen later this year. Countries are aiming to forge a deal on how developing nations can be rewarded for the carbon held in the forests – and thus out of the atmosphere.

But even if these talks are successful it will take time to get a fully functioning carbon-based scheme up and running – perhaps ten years. Over this period another 60 million hectares could be lost. This is why some, including The Prince’s Rainforests Project, urge that emergency action to cut deforestation is launched right away.

It has been estimated that as a first step 5 Euros per person (from OECD countries) per year would be needed between 2010 and 2015 to cut tropical deforestation by 25 per cent. Money would be paid to countries in direct proportion to how much forest they save. It would provide the kind of concrete incentive that has so far been lacking when rainforest nations have been confronted with choices as to whether they should keep their forests or liquidate them to earn foreign exchange.

If an emergency mechanism can be set up now, while a longer term solution is formulated in the light of an agreement reached at the Copenhagen summit, then we can save most of what remains of our planet’s incredible green equatorial lifebelt. It would cost some money, but considering the benefits gained it must surely be the biggest bargain in history.

The public awareness phase of the PRP public engagement campaign has been active since May 5th and has reached millions of people. On behalf of the rainforests, the PRP wants to send the biggest SOS to those who have the power to make change happen before the forthcoming global climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. Only if we take action to stop tropical rainforest destruction can we tackle climate change before it is too late.
You can help create a climate for change.

Send your Rainforest SOS to the world at www.rainforestSOS.org