Forests play a major role in the Earth’s carbon cycle. Trees pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock the carbon away in their wood and in the soil beneath them. Over time, we have cut down or damaged at least three-quarters of the world’s forests and that destruction has been an important contributor to climate change.
The Amazon jungle, much of which is in Brazil, is the largest tropical forest in the world. It and others has been the target of rampant deforestation as development, agriculture and the timber industry ramped up.
The growing environmental movement around the world has started to have a real effect on countries with tropical forests such as Costa Rica, Brazil and Indonesia. Pressure from environmental groups and Western consumers who care about sustainable practices has had a significant impact. Over the past decade, deforestation in Brazil has dropped by 83%. In Costa Rica, where the majority of the forests were chopped down by the middle of the 20th century, trees now blanket more than half of the country.
About a quarter of the carbon dioxide that we pump into the air is absorbed by trees and other plants. Trees are the ultimate carbon capture and storage technology. Leaders around the world are contemplating plans to encourage forest regrowth on a giant scale, perhaps as much as a billion acres, equal to about half the land of the United States. This is exceedingly ambitious, but it could be the means by which the world could buy a few extra decades to achieve an orderly transition away from fossil fuels.
********
.
Web Links
Restored Forests Breathe Life Into Efforts Against Climate Change
Photo, posted June 18, 2012, courtesy of Nguyen Ngoc Chinh via Flickr.
.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.