Today at the side event hosted by the NGO SustainUS I was able to learn a lot of interesting facts about forest protection. Deforestation is a huge reason why we have so many carbon emissions in our atmosphere. Trees are a natural carbon dioxide regulator for the Earth, meaning they store the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere; therefore, there are less harmful emission increases. When trees capture carbon dioxide they store the CO2 in wood and in the ground.
Some people believe that if someone cuts down trees in forests that it is possible to just plant new ones to cancel out the effects, but in fact, this is false. Older forests have the capacity to store more carbon dioxide than those forests that are more recently planted. Since older forests contain more carbon dioxide stored in them than newer forests, there are huge amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when the trees are cut down, and the newly planted trees have a much smaller capacity to store carbon since they are relatively young.
About 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the clearing of forests mostly in the regions of developing countries. If we want to reduce the risk of temperature increase, one of the easiest ways would be to protect our natural forests. Just because newly planted trees do not store as much carbon dioxide as older trees, does not mean that investing in projects to keep planting trees should not be done. At this event, there seemed to be a lot hope that if youth and other members of society become informed and involved that we would have the ability to protect forests and decrease our harmful emissions that are due to deforestation.
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