On Earth Day this year , Rainforest Trust launches

our new Rainforest Climate Action Fund .

Funding projects that sequester large amounts of CO2 , helping in the fight against climate change .

See back cover for more information .

On Earth Day , April 22 , Rainforest Trust will launch the Rainforest Climate Action Fund to enable our donors and partners to maximize the impact of their support on climate change .

When Rainforest Trust was founded in 1988 , the importance and urgency of climate change was not well understood . Nor was the critical role forests play in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in wood and soil . Today we know that about a quarter of the 1.5 trillion tons

has been released into the atmosphere by man

of CO2 we humans have emitted since the industrial revolution has been caused by land-cover change , especially deforestation . At the same time , almost half of these emissions have been safely re-absorbed by oceans and forests . But this process of sequestration will end and the stored carbon will be dumped back into the atmosphere if we continue to degrade nature .

Each of the 193 protected areas we and our partners have created since 1988 have helped save endangered species and ecosystems from extinction . But many of these projects also have had a huge impact protecting the planet from climate change . Several types of projects are particularly impactful .

First are projects which massively reduce carbon emissions in the immediate future because they protect forests in imminent danger of destruction , so-called “ frontier forests .” As the project prevents this from happening , our partner will have the opportunity to sell “ reduced deforestation carbon credits ” to companies keen to offset their own unavoidable emissions , and those sales will support forest protection .

But without our initial land-purchase grant , none of this would be possible .

Second are projects which protect forests that are actively drawing large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground . Most forests do this to some degree because decomposition is incomplete , allowing carbon-rich soil to accumulate . But forests inundated by

TOP : AL ’ FRED / SHUTTERSTOCK ; MIDDLE RIGHT : RICH CAREY / SHUTTERSTOCK ; BOTTOM : NATTAPONG PONBUMRUNGWONG / SHUTTERSTOCK