Worldwide events for International Year of Forests

This April the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, Kenya, are launching forest awards through the Community Forest Associations. In Russia, throughout this spring and coming summer there are plans for creative art events among forestry workers in Russia as part of that country's "Singing Forest" contest.

On the internet, an official UN video - Of Forests and Men  - has been released by the photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand; it's a short 7-minute film made up of aerial images to classical music that were shown earlier this year during a plenary session of the Ninth Session of United Nations Forum on Forests.

Woodlands still represent almost one third of our planet's land surface area, but deforestation began thousands of years ago for agriculture and construction. In the last 20 years, more than 300 million hectares of tropical forests (an area larger than the size of India) have been cleared for plantations, agriculture, pasture, mining and the development of urban environments. In 2011, forests cover only half of the area they did when agriculture began 13,000 years ago.

However, one in four people still depend directly on forests for their subsistence and livelihood. Furthermore, there is so much left to discover in terms of plant and animal species as well as natural medicines and viable food sources. Forests also filter and store water, an increasingly endangered resource. They also digest water pollutants and control weather, in particular rainfall.

"Forests also contain more carbon than is found in the entire atmosphere of the Earth," says Matthew Owen, Director of Cool Earth, one of the leading organisations dedicated to conserving the world's tropical rainforests.

"Not far from the forests we protect in collaboration with the Ashaninka, in Peru, there are still uncontacted indigenous communities  who are arguably amongst the last remaining true guardians of the forests."

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