Amazon rainforest | Forestman72
Why Protect Tropical Forests?
There is great potential in the world’ s forests. When considered together, tropical, temperate, and boreal forests store approximately 861 gigatons of carbon in their trees and other vegetation, debris and leaf litter, and soil.
But there is also great risk contained in the world’ s forests. When deforestation occurs, CO 2 is released. Fires, deforestation, and forest degradation emit carbon at different rates, but it all adds up to climate disruption. Between 12 – 20 % of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by land use change, primarily deforestation. In fact, if tropical deforestation were a country, it would be the fourth-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, after China, the United States, and India.
On average, every single acre of tropical forest safeguards 245 metric tons of CO 2 equivalents, which is equal to the consumption of more than 27,500 gallons of gasoline.
This combination of risk and potential drives the Rainforest Trust approach to climate change mitigation, and is why we have our Rainforest Climate Action Fund( RCAF). Every single one of our land protection projects safeguards carbon in the trees, biomass, and soil of those protected acres. Among these, some projects stand out, offering an opportunity to protect especially large quantities of CO 2 equivalents for a low per-acre cost. These are our RCAF projects, many of which protect forests for as little as $ 5-10 per acre.
Rainforests are the focus of our approach because they hold the greatest potential for carbon storage and sequestration. Despite accounting for only 30 percent of all global tree cover, tropical rainforests store 50 percent of the world’ s carbon that is stored within trees. On average, every single acre of tropical forest safeguards 245 metric tons of CO 2 equivalents, which is equal to the consumption of more than 27,500 gallons of gasoline or the average annual electricity use of approximately 51 homes in the United States.
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