The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. [1]
Deforestation is often cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change deforestation, mainly in tropical areas, account for up to one-third of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. [2]
New research confirms that avoiding deforestation can play a key role in reducing future greenhouse gas concentrations. Scientists report in the journal Science that tropical deforestation releases 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon each year into the atmosphere.
“Deforestation in the tropics accounts for nearly 20 per cent of carbon emissions due to human activities,” Dr Canadell says. “This will release an estimated 87 to 130 billion tonnes of carbon by 2100, which is greater than the amount of carbon that would be released by 13 years of global fossil fuel combustion. So maintaining forests as carbon sinks will make a significant contribution to stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.”
As our understanding of the role forests play in stabilising global climate increases, it is becoming clear that their destruction is only exacerbating climate change. If we're serious about tackling this, then preserving our remaining ancient forests has to be a priority.
Mature forests store enormous quantities of carbon, both in the trees and vegetation itself and within the soil in the form of decaying plant matter. Forests in areas such as the Congo and the Amazon represent some of the world's largest carbon stores on land.
But when forests are logged or burnt, that carbon is released into the atmosphere, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and accelerating the rate of climate change. So much carbon is released that they contribute up to one-fifth of global man-made emissions, more than the world's entire transport sector.
Deforestation has such a massive effect on climate change that Indonesia and Brazil are now the third and fourth largest emitters of carbon dioxide on the planet. This dubious honour comes not from industrial or transport emissions, but from deforestation - up to 75 per cent of Brazil's emissions come solely from deforestation - with the majority coming from clearing and burning areas of the Amazon rainforest. [3]
More than 50 per cent of the life on Earth is in tropical forests, which cover less than 7 per cent of the planet's surface. They generate the bulk of rainfall worldwide and act as a thermostat for the Earth. [1]
About half of the mature tropical forests, between 750 to 800 million hectares of the original 1.5 to 1.6 billion hectares that once covered the planet have fallen.
Unless significant measures are taken on a world-wide basis to preserve them, by 2030 there will only be ten percent remaining with another ten percent in a degraded condition. 80 percent will have been lost and with them the irreversible loss of hundreds of thousands of species. [2]
...specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute.[4]