We need to protect the planet’s remaining forests not only to stop climate change from getting worse, but to ensure that we can stand the impacts of global warming. Healthy forests absorb and store quantities of carbon, helping to regulate temperature and generate rain. When they are destroyed, this carbon is released into the atmosphere. Thus keeping forests standing is both a critical part of regulating climate change and of adapting to a warmer world.
To date, most of the talk has focused on how to pay for reducing deforestation (滥伐森林), rather than on how to actually go about doing it. We believe governments need to support local people to protect their environment, as we have been showing for 20 years can be a very effective way of saving rainforests.
