World Rainforest Day 2022
Today (June 22nd) is World Rainforest Day. World Rainforest Day is about raising awareness of the importance of the rainforests and what they do for us.
World Rainforest Day: What Is It?
World Rainforest Day was launched in 2017 by the Rainforest Partnership and recognises standing, healthy forests as one of the most powerful and cost-effective climate change mitigation tools we have. The partnership aims to create a global movement to protect and restore them. World Rainforest Day has been created to take decisive action to combat deforestation, reduce the effects of climate change, and protect our rainforests for future generations.
What Are Rainforests?
Rainforests are a type of forest where rainfall is continuous and abundant all year round. Most of our planet’s rainforests are found in the tropics, but they can also be found in temperate zones.
Tropical Rainforests
Most rainforests are found in tropical regions, such as equatorial Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, and parts of Australia. The world’s largest rainforests are tropical and are found in the Amazon, the Congo, and New Guinea.
Temperate Rainforests
There are also ‘temperate rainforests’ that grow in temperate regions (the middle latitudes between the tropics and the polar regions of the Earth) where year-round rainfall is high and steady and frost is rare. The biggest temperate rainforest is the Tongass National Forest, covering more than 6.5 million hectares of Alaskan wilderness. However there are also temperate rainforests in northern Europe including the Ariundle Oakwoods near us in the West Highlands of Scotland. Temperate rainforests usually support great expanses of mosses that absorb huge amounts of rainwater that evaporates slowly during dry spells, maintaining the levels of humidity and the growth of the other lower plants such as liverworts, ferns, and lichens.
Why Do We Need Them?
Rainforests cover only 6 or 7% of the earth’s land surface, yet contain over half of all plant and animal species. Rainforests play an essential role in maintaining our climate by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, in fact the Amazon is thought to produce 20% of the oxygen we breathe. Rainforests also help regulate temperature and humidity levels, providing homes for wildlife and habitats for plants and animals. In many ways the rainforests are the life blood keeping our planet alive.
Find out more in this video:
What's Happening To Rainforests Around The World?
Despite the recognition of the importance of rainforests to human and planetary health, deforestation in the world’s tropical rainforests has remained persistently high since the 1980s. This is due to human demand for food, fiber, and fuel and the failure to recognise the impotance and value of these forests to the ecosystems. Since 2002, an average of 3.2 million hectares of primary tropical forests — the most biodiverse and carbon-dense type of forest — have been destroyed per year and an even larger area of secondary forest is cleared or degraded each year. The Amazon is at the top of all the tropical forest areas in terms of its annual area of forest loss. Between 2002 and 2019, more than 30 million hectares of primary forest was cleared in the region, or about half the world’s total tropical primary forest loss during that period. This represents 5% of its overall area in this time.
What Can You Do About It?
There are several things you can do to help save rainforests. Firstly, you can learn more about them, as the more you understand about them, the more you are likely to do things that will help to preserve them. Secondly, you can support organisations that work to preserve rainforests. Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, you can take steps yourself to reduce your own contribution to the destruction of rainforests around the world. For instance, deforestation due to agriculture is a big part of the rainforest reduction. Why not work to reduce your food waste by making sure you’re only purchasing and using what you need Helping your local wildlife is also an excellent way to sustain global biodiversity, and you can help migrating birds on their way back to the tropical rainforests by having a bird feeder.
Trees have long stood as silent witnesses to the passage of time, weaving their roots deep into the cultures of our planet. Across such cultures and across continents, they have been revered, worshipped, and seen as symbols of life, wisdom, and interconnectedness. For many Indigenous communities around the world, individual trees hold profound spiritual, cultural, and ecological significance. This article examines some of these beliefs, exploring the deep connections that Indigenous peoples have with individual trees and the ways these connections shape their worldviews and lifestyles.