COP24 | Why protecting rainforest needs to be top of the agenda.

If you’re looking for just one urgent reason to protect forest, this is it. We have a limited time before the rainforest actually turns on us. A global temperature rise of only 2ºC means risking what scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions. When this happens, the Arctic Sea ice and tropical rainforests lose their ability to store carbon. Instead they start to release it.

An acre of rainforest stores a huge 260 tonnes of carbon. That’s about the amount that one American produces in 13 years. In just the last two years, deforestation has released CO2 equal to 85 million cars’ lifetime emissions. Amazingly, the more large mammals found in tropical forests, the more carbon is stored. It’s vital to have large areas of biodiverse rainforest to keep carbon locked in.

Deforestation in small patches (about 1 hectare) is having the biggest impact. Slash and burn removes forest cover to plant crops, and leaves soil fertility quickly depleted. This gives farmers little choice but to move onto another patch. These small areas add up: fires in the Amazon released the same amount of carbon as the whole of Italy last year.

Rainforests drive the flow of water at a global level. They pump air and water around the world, circulating water vapour, and feeding rivers that eventually take water back to the oceans. The water that a single tree transpires daily has a cooling effect equivalent to two domestic air conditioners. Two-thirds of the Amazon gets less rainfall now than in 2000. That not only means less water to circulate within the Amazon basin, but less that can then be circulated globally.

Just like the polar ice caps, the mature canopy cover of tropical rainforests reflect heat back into space and keeps the planet cool. This is called the albedo effect, with rainforests acting as a giant reflective mirror. If we break these essential mirrors around the tropics, it won’t just be seven years bad luck, it will change the way we live worldwide.

Indigenous communities worldwide protect a fifth of Earth’s surface and 80 percent of biodiversity on the planet. This makes them powerful stakeholders when responding to climate change challenges. But the power of indigenous-led conservation is too often ignored.

Valuable traditional knowledge needs to be recognised in order to tackle the adverse impacts of climate change. Empowered rainforest communities are the most powerful conservation force we have.