Rainforest Facts
On average, an area of rainforest roughly the size of Los Angeles disappears every month.
Destruction of the rainforest sends vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. About as much as all of the CO2 emitted by the US every year. And it’s accelerating at a rapid pace. [1,2].
The deforestation makes room for cattle ranching and farmland for crops such as soya or palm oil. [2,3] But the money from these activities offers only short-term gains. Rainforest soil is thin and fragile, and, once cleared, its ability to support crops significantly deteriorates. [4]
Rainforests are worth much more when left standing. They have an international carbon value far greater than their farming worth, and when managed sustainably, can generate a good income for the local economy.
With your support, Tropicana is working with Cool Earth to secure seriously endangered land that could otherwise be sold to loggers and ranchers and cut down within the next 18 months.
Working with partners throughout the Amazon, Cool Earth is protecting forest in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru once held by forest harvesters and loggers. They put the land in a local trust and help to protect it around the clock to keep the carbon where it belongs.
By creating a series of social programs and employing local people to do the work in protecting the land, Cool Earth helps locals gain income from the forest without cutting it down.
The Cool Earth team has already saved thousands of endangered acres and locked up tens of millions of tons of carbon.
Footnotes:
1. Raupach, Marland, Ciais, Le Quéré, Canadell*, Klepper, and Field; Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, June 12, 2007, vol. 104 no. 24 10288-10293
2. IPCC (2007) Working Group 1, Chapter 7; Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry. www.ipcc.com The Eliasch Review. Climate Change: Financing Global Forests. 2008. http://www.occ.gov.uk/activities/eliasch.htm
3. Asner, Knapp, Broadbent, Oliveira, Keller, Silva; Selective Logging in the Brazilian Amazon. Science 21 October 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5747, pp. 480 – 482.
4. Buol, Hole, and McCracken; Soil Genesis and Classification. 1997. 4th edition. (The Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa.)