Forests Matter for Climate, Biodiversity, and Equality

Billions of people depend directly on ecosystem services that forests provide, and most of the planet’s terrestrial plants and animals rely on habitats within forests and the areas surrounding them. Forests are also the world’s largest land-based carbon sink.

Yet forests are continuously being lost at an alarming pace. In 2024 alone, the world lost a record 30 million hectares of tree cover, including 6.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest rich in biodiversity and essential for carbon storage.

The drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are complex and differ from region to region, but at their core are unsustainable global economic and political systems. They include large-scale agriculture, extractive industries, unequal power relations, corruption, and illegal activities, as well as market and governance failures that weaken democracy and restrict civic space.

As forests disappear, their loss accelerates two of the most urgent crises of our time: climate change and biodiversity loss, the latter often described as the sixth mass extinction. At the same time, Indigenous Peoples and Forest-dependent Communities, who are among the world’s poorest and most marginalised, disproportionately face the impacts of deforestation and climate change, adding to a third crisis: growing global inequality.

Scientific assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirm that forest-based adaptation and preventing the conversion of natural ecosystems are among the most cost-effective and immediately actionable strategies for addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation. Legitimate governance and locally led adaptation and mitigation initiatives are seen as essential for the sustainability of emerging climate investments.

We address these interconnected crises by conserving vital forests in partnership with Indigenous Peoples, Forest-dependent Communities, and frontline allies. 

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