This article discusses how the loss of tropical forests makes climate change worse. Increasing losses of tropical forests raises critical challenges for managing climate change risks.
Forests are among nature’s best defenders against climate change – if we could just leave them alone long enough that they can fulfill their destiny as avid carbon consumers.
Trees naturally suck carbon dioxide out of the air, a function that helps counteract human emissions into it each year. In fact, by some estimates, the world’s forests absorb around one-third of human-caused CO2 emissions.
And tropical trees tend to be even thirstier for CO2 than their counterparts in temperate regions, thanks at least in part to longer growing seasons.
Human activity, however, is undercutting that natural potential.