Protected Forest Areas May Be Critical Strategy for Slowing Climate Change

"Deforestation leads to about 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes on earth. If we fail to reduce it, we'll fail to stabilize our climate," said Taylor Ricketts, director of World Wildlife Fund's science program and lead author of the study. "Our paper emphasizes that creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas can offer an effective means to cut emissions while garnering numerous additional benefits for local people and wildlife."

Climate Crisis Thrusts Forest Conservation into World Spotlight

Deputy Director General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN, Dr. Jackson said the continued global decline in forest area and quality, particularly in the tropics, has serious social, economic and ecological consequences. But he sees hope for forests in the urgency of tackling global warming.

Given the rate at which climate change is happening, no country, rich or poor, can afford to neglect its forests, Jackson told conference delegates at La Rural exhibition center. "We must seize this moment to promote the sustainable management of forests and to develop sustainable livelihoods for the people who depend on forests."

Climate change is costing us now

Despite the strong conclusions of the international and Australian scientific communities there are people yet to be convinced that human-induced climate change is likely to or already having adverse impacts.

Climate scientists tend to focus on what might happen decades into the future based on scenarios of varying future greenhouse gas emissions. However, the starting point can be today, as measured by environmental trends of rising temperatures, longer droughts, depleted water resources, more heatwaves, shifting storm tracks, rising sea levels and more extreme events.

Tropics: Global Warming Likely to Significantly Affect Rainfall Patterns

Analyzing global model warming projections in models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a team of scientists headed by meteorologist Shang-Ping Xie at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa's International Pacific Research Center, finds that ocean temperature patterns in the tropics and subtropics will change in ways that will lead to significant changes in rainfall patterns. The study will be published in the Journal of Climate this month, breaking ground on such regional climate forecasts.