The Festival Beach Food Forest is a way of reconnecting the Austin community to the natural world and specifically the important role trees and forests play on our planet. With that in mind we our proud to support Rainforest Partnership in launching World Rainforest Day. Please read the blog below by Rainforest Partnership executive director and fellow forest friend Niyanta Spelman.
Why World Rainforest Day?
If you are wondering why Rainforest Partnership is launching a World Rainforest Day, it is because we cherish rainforests. We recognize just how delicately precious yet immensely critical these magical ecosystems are for sustaining our global society, no matter where you or I live on this planet.
We envision this inaugural World Rainforest Day as the opportunity to educate the world, celebrate, and come together to protect our rainforests. We have to act now to protect them if we want to tackle climate change while the world is shifting to a low carbon economy, slowly but surely. Rainforests make up about 2% of the world’s surface area, and to many they are distant and intangible, but it is important to remind everyone across the globe why they need protecting.
Rainforests play such a crucial role in keeping our planet healthy. They are carbon sinks, storing and absorbing the carbon dioxide in the air, and they circulate more than 20% of the world’s oxygen. Not only do they mitigate climate change, but deforestation alone accounts for over 15% of global carbon emissions, annually. Beyond climate change, deforestation is devastating to our planet’s biodiversity. More than half of all animal and plant species are found in rainforests and a fifth of the world’s fresh water. It is a tragic fact that at the current rate of deforestation 28,000 species will become extinct by 2050.
At Rainforest Partnership we work year round to protect rainforests, we live and breathe rainforests every day. This is true for most other organizations around the world that focus their tireless efforts in protecting our rainforests. We envision this day to help highlight our individual and collective efforts in protecting these forests and build ever increasing awareness and response. It is going to take all of us working on rainforest protection to rally the rest of the world in helping us. When we protect these forests, we do it for all of us everywhere.
Because the world can’t wait!
