A lot of people depends on forest, 70 million including indigenous communities call this a home. It gives to the humans oxygen, a shelter, jobs, food, water. It’s not really shared, but, by feeding our rivers, forests provide drinking water for almost half of the world's largest cities. Forested watersheds and wetlands provide 75% of the world´s accessible freshwater. It’s a filter pollution and chemicals, which improves the quality of the water available for human use. ! The soils are conserved, so it’s protecting the communities against floods and produces the rich topsoil needed to grow plants and crops. Human health is linked to forest health: the deforestation increases the risks of diseases for us but also for animals. It was also shown that time spent on forest has a positive benefit on cardiovascular disease respiratory, and mental health.
The forest is a home for 80% of terrestrial biodiversity. The deforestation of tropical forest loss of as many as 100 species a day, an entire ecosystem. The wildlife population have declined on average by 69% since 1970. And the amazon forest is the most affected.
We all know the critical climate situation. The forest is the largest storehouse of carbon after the ocean. It absorbs it and lock it, below ground. So cutting, and damage the forests are release a huge amount of carbon emission that contributes to the climate crisis. The events caused by the climate change are a lot of wildfire, which limits the ability of our forest to regenerate .The climate action is to stop deforestation and restoring forests. Since 1990, we lost 420million of hectare. What engenders deforestation is also massive crops such as oil palm, soja sauce, wood, paper pulp… It destroyed 70% of tropical forests.
The international forest day this year is focused on using modern technologies more, to fight against this. This is what we called also, innovation. We can use chemistry of trees and turning in Into biodegradable plastic for example, batteries, new sustainable fashion, materials, and place to work. Innovation and technologies have revolutionized forest monitoring enabling countries to track and report on their forest more effectively ! Countries are encouraged to undertake local, national and international efforts to organize activities involving forests and trees, such as tree planting campaigns.
Mindsets are changing, we all talk more about this. We need to have hope for the future, because this is our life engaged. Before, forests represented, and took half of the planet space. Now, they only represent 30% of the planet. The fate of the forest is also ours.