What do you know about forest?

Forest

Forests are vital for the health of our planet and its inhabitants. They cover around one-third of all land on Earth and provide many benefits for people and nature. Forests help stabilize the climate by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming. Forests also regulate ecosystems, protect biodiversity, support livelihoods, and supply goods and services that can drive sustainable growth.

However, forests are under threat from deforestation and degradation, which contribute to climate change and biodiversity loss. Around 25% of global emissions come from the land sector, the second largest source after the energy sector. About half of these emissions come from deforestation and forest degradation. Forests are home to 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, including many endangered species. When forests are destroyed, we lose not only their habitats but also their ecological functions and services.

To conserve forests and their benefits, we need to keep more forest landscapes intact, manage them more sustainably, and restore more of those landscapes that we have lost. Halting the loss and degradation of forest ecosystems and promoting their restoration have the potential to contribute over one-third of the total climate change mitigation that scientists say is required by 2030 to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Restoring 350 million hectares of degraded land in line with the Bonn Challenge could sequester up to 1.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. Forests also support the livelihoods of over 1.6 billion people, many of whom are the world’s poorest, and provide us with oxygen, water, food, fuel, medicine and more.

Forests are a stabilizing force for the climate and a lifeline for biodiversity. We must protect them for our own sake and for the sake of all life on Earth.