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Do Trees Grow on Money
Do Trees Grow on Money?
Rainforests are back on the global agenda in a big way. Governments now recognize the importance of protecting tropical forests in order to avoid dangerous climate change, and there is now much debate. As governments try to thrash out the details of a new international agreement, expected to be signed at the end of 2009, they are discussing how best to include measures to save rainforests, and thereby address one of the major causes of climate change. Worldwide, forest destruction generates more greenhouse gas emissions each year than do all the trains, planes and cars on the planet. So if we are to tackle global warming, there is an urgent need to find ways to reduce the 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by forest destruction each year, and to keep the remaining forests standing.
Trees Could Buy Time to Halt Global Warming
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming
Plants and trees are growing faster because of rising carbon dioxide levels, potentially buying Earth more time to address global warming, according to scientists.
The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops.
It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.
Rainforest Reforestation Efforts
Rwanda's government and various ecological groups are paying special attention to the Gishwati Forest Reserve. Once a vast rainforest, activities such as deforestation and refugee resettlement reduced it to a fraction of its original size around the turn of the century [source: Science Daily]. Since then, reforestation has somewhat increased the size of the forest, but it remains a sliver of its original size.
Can We Replant the Planet's Rainforests?
It's hard not to be impressed by rainforests. Towering, aged trees called emergents stretch almost 250 feet (76 meters) into the air, surpassing the interwoven canopy that both covers and houses more than half of the world's species. Though rainforests contain nearly half of all the planet's trees, they only cover about 7 percent of the surface of the land [source: UNEP].
Sustaining Tropical Forests
Strategies for preserving tropical forests can operate on local to international scales. On a local scale, governments and non-governmental organizations are working with forest communities to encourage low-impact agricultural activities, such as shade farming, as well as the sustainable harvesting of non-wood forest products such as rubber, cork, produce, or medicinal plants. Parks and protected areas that draw tourists—ecotourism—can provide employment and educational opportunities for local people as well as creating or stimulating related service-sector economies.
