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About Rainforests |
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Rainforests are precious resources for all of us
– not just for the nations in which they are
found. They provide vital ecosystem benefits for
the whole world. They store water, regulate
rainfall and provide a home to over half the
planet’s biodiversity. But more importantly,
they also play a crucial role in climate change.
And that’s why we’re worried. |
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it comes to climate change, the destruction of
rainforests has a double whammy effect for
everyone. Rainforests absorb almost a fifth of
the world’s man-made CO2 emissions every year.
But tropical deforestation releases an extra 17%
of annual greenhouse gas emissions. So if the
rainforests are destroyed, it’s bad news on both
counts. |
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Rapid deforestation |
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Rainforests around the world are being destroyed
at an alarming rate. This is increasingly due to
destructive logging operations and conversion of
the land for farming use. |
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Cutting down and burning tropical forests to
clear the land in this way enables rainforest
nations to provide globally traded commodities,
such as timber, palm oil, beef and soy.
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world’s population is likely to increase from 6
billion to 9 billion over the next 40 years.
This population growth, combined with rising
incomes, will lead to a continual increasing
demand for food, animal feed and fuel. And this,
in turn, will lead to more destruction of
rainforests – with devastating effects for
everyone. |
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| The
need for urgent action |
| The
Prince’s Rainforests Project believes that
emergency funding is needed to help protect
rainforests and to encourage rainforest nations
to continue to develop without the need for
deforestation. |
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we don’t take action, we could lose another 100
million hectares of tropical forests over the
next 10 years – that’s an area the size of
Egypt. |
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Saving the rainforests will give the world a
better chance to achieve its goals of
stabilising climate change, while also
preserving important ecosystem benefits, not to
mention the fact that over one billion of the
poorest people on Earth depend on the
rainforests for their livelihoods. |
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need for action is urgent. Recent research shows
that it will be impossible to avoid catastrophic
climate change without it |
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More
info - see source:
www.rainforestsos.org
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