The environmental charity Earthwatch recently held a public lecture in London to outline their concerns regarding worldwide deforestation. Earthwatch is trying to increase public awareness regarding the extent to which deforestation contributes to global warming.
Deforestation contributes approximately 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions each year. The main reason deforestation is such an issue is that old growth forests are being cut down to, on the most part, be converted into farmland. When trees are cut down, they release their stored carbon and also can no longer absorb any carbon that is in the atmosphere.
Earthwatch is urging nations to come to an agreement which includes deforestation issues when they meet for the UN summit in Copenhagen this December. Deforestation was not addressed in the current Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
UN’s secretary general’s climate change envoy, Gro Harlem Brundtland, has said that deforestation emissions are similar to total carbon dioxide emissions of China or the United States. Brundtland stated: “While forests were left out of the Kyoto Protocol, it must now find its place within the broader solution.”
A real concern facing slowing deforestation is money. Dr. Dan Bebber, Earthwatch’s head of climate change research, stated: “There have been some very strong pressures to use forests in an unsustainable way, particularly in the tropics. You could probably make a thousand times more money by converting tropical forests to agricultural land to grow, for example, soya beans than you could managing it in a sustainable way. It is this imbalance that needs to be addressed at a global level.”
Many ideas have been passed around as to how to restrict deforestation and keep countries’ economies strong. The main idea involves money contributed by richer nations for global warming concerns could be given to poorer nations in order to protect forests. Obviously no plan has been worked out as of yet, however many environmental groups hope one will be put in the works in Copenhagen.
