Forests are a key ally in combating climate change – and we need to join together to be allies for the forest. Simply put: we can’t solve the climate crisis without protecting forests. Forests are like great big climate stabilizing systems that do so much good: they regulate ecosystems, provide habitat and protect biodiversity, play an integral part in the carbon cycle, and are home and livelihood for millions of people around the world. When forests are healthy, they absorb a good chunk of the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels, but when forests are burned - often to clear land for destructive agricultural practices and biofuel – CO2 is released and climate change is accelerated.
It’s this simple: to maximize the climate benefit of forests, we must keep more forest landscapes intact, manage forests sustainably, and restore those that we have lost. And, we must protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local traditional communities who live in and depend on forests. Many studies have documented that forests are healthiest when the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are honored and respected. Instead, these communities are too often threatened and forest defenders are harassed and even killed as they seek to protect forests that we all need to survive.
We stand in solidarity with forest defenders from the Arctic to the Amazon, the Canadian Boreal to Indonesia to the Congo. Together, we can protect the forests and the communities who depend on them which, when it comes to climate change, includes all of us.