Role of forests in climate change

The humanitarian emergency caused by few last months’ devastating floods in Asia warning that the situation could get worse, The people affected by this crisis have lost everything, and their difficulties are only just beginning two countries Pakistan and Thailand badly hit by the disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people face a struggle for survival over the next six months. Thousands of homes have been damaged, possessions destroyed and hundreds of schools, roads and health facilities are closed.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that by the year 2050 around 60 percent of the world's population will experience severe water shortages, with 33 percent thought to be already under water stress. Water cycle has been disturbed badly in all over the world causing, food depletion, drought, flooding, rising sea level, increase in green house gases and scary food shortage. The root causes behind the scene consider deforestation mainly.

Forests cover 31% of the total global land area. These forests give home to 80% of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity and the livelihood of 1.6 billion people around the world depends on forests. Recognizing the global importance of forests the United Nations declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests to raise awareness on conservation, multiple use and sustainable development of all types of forests.Forest as major source of climate play important role in climate change and have great significance.

Forests have four major roles in climate change: they currently contribute about one-sixth of global carbon emissions when cleared, overused or degraded; they react sensitively to a changing climate; when managed sustainably, they produce wood fuels as a benign alternative to fossil fuels; and finally, they have the potential to absorb about one-tenth of global carbon emissions projected for the first half of this century into their biomass, soils and products and store them

 “Forests and trees on farms are a direct source of food and cash income for more than a billion of the world’s poorest people,” Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Assistant Director-General for Forestry Eduardo Rojas-Brails said.
“They provide both staple foods and supplemental foods. To enhance these benefits, governments and development partners should increase investments in support of sustainable forest management and rehabilitation of degraded forest lands,” he added, noting that in India, more than 50 million people depend directly on forests for subsistence, while in Laos wild foods are consumed by 80 per cent of its 6.4 million people on a daily basis.

Forests can play an even greater role in feeding the world with products ranging from vitamin-rich leaves to fruits and roots. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there were 4.033 billion hectares of forest or 31% of total land area standing in the world in 2010. That's down slightly from 2000.

With 1 billion people suffering from chronic hunger, the role of forests for timber must not overshadow their important contribution to feeding many of the world's poorest communities, and their over-exploitation for wood must be curbed, according to the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), a 14-member group which includes several UN agencies.

The story of the world's forests is usually a depressing one. Tropical rain forests are under pressure in South America, Asia and Africa, threatening habitat for countless species and adding billions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. but the good news is that the rate of overall forest loss has slowed considerably, dropping from 8.3 million hectares lost a year in the 1990s to 5.2 million hectares a year, thanks in part to significant reforestation taking place throughout much of Asia.

Emmanuel Ze Meka, Executive Director of the International Tropical Timber Organization, noted, "Food products are the fastest growing component of non-timber forest products in many tropical countries. And adding value to the forest makes it more likely to remain forest rather than converted to other uses."

Government and relevant authorities took serious action on the growth of trees and forests otherwise situation of survival become very difficult as we see most poor African countries especially just consider the example of Ethiopia that has lost three-quarters of its remaining trees in the last twenty-five years. Forest cover is now down to just 3%. This land, the birthplace of all humanity, has grown barren. (It's the usual story: the greed of the former dictatorship; unwise land policies; the desperate poor cutting trees for fuel.) Since 1985, the year of the "Live Aid" concert, food production has declined by two-thirds, and twice as many Ethiopians are going hungry.