Tropical forests play a really critical role in both
combating and contributing to climate change.
It can be frustrating
to look at the global data.
But I think it’s really important to look at
where we are succeeding.
We know what works.
We know how to do it.
And if we look at these success stories,
we can learn lessons.
We have more tools than ever to
help us combat deforestation.
This graph shows all primary forest loss in Brazil,
year after year.
The brown parts of the bar shows
forest loss that’s related to fire
and the green parts is forest loss related to all other causes.
Brazil was often seen as the
golden child of tropical forest conservation.
Yet in 2019,
Brazil saw a new president – President Bolsonaro.
Fire outbreaks tend to occur
virtually at the same places,
where Brazilians of Indigenous ancestry
burn their farmlands in search of livelihood.
Bolsonaro was very vocally
against forest conservation.
He gutted many environmental laws.
He gutted Environmental Enforcement Agencies.
As a result, we saw significantly rising deforestation
in the Brazilian Amazon.
President Lula da Silva took office in 2023.
Climate change will have the highest priority
in my government.
He bolstered law enforcement.
He created new environmental laws.
And he also started increasing recognition of
Indigenous peoples and local communities rights to the land.
We saw an incredible reduction
in forest loss in Brazil in 2023.
So he really reversed that trend.
Which shows to us
how important political leadership
is in saving tropical forests.
Data and transparency of data
play an incredibly important role
in protecting tropical forests.
This is a photo from Madagascar,
where members of the National Park Service
have been using an app called Forest Watcher,
which is part of Global Forest Watch.
Global Forest Watch is a free online tool
that uses satellites,
cloud computing and artificial intelligence
to allow anyone, anywhere to see where
forests are disappearing
and where they’re growing back in real time.
Rainforest Foundation US work with over 30 communities in Peru
to train them on the use of Forest Watcher.
So looking at those 30 communities
that received access to the technology,
they compared them to another 30 communities
that did not.
If you look at the community territory that is up to the left,
you see a lot more deforestation occurring.
But the really cool thing is you can also
just see it on the map.
If you look at the territory that is circled,
this is one of the communities that had access to the technology,
and you see fewer
deforestation alerts populating in that area
over the past few years.
And what we were able to show is
over the first year alone,
the communities that were using Forest Watcher
reduced deforestation by 50%
compared to those who were not.
This map shows the really critical role that
Indigenous peoples and local communities
play in protecting tropical forests in the Amazon.
You can see that the areas
where Indigenous peoples manage the forests
are actually protected.
But outside those areas,
deforestation is often increasing.
We see this trend where Indigenous peoples
are playing an incredibly important role
in protecting tropical forests,
not just in the Amazon,
but in other countries as well.
A really critical international agreement
for Indigenous peoples
is the UN Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous People.
UNDRIP ensures the rights of Indigenous peoples
to their land and to their resources,
the rights to self determination,
and also a process that we call FPIC,
or free prior informed consent,
which says that communities need to be engaged
and consulted and give consent
before a government, for example,
could remove them from their lands.
We estimate that about 50% of the world’s land
is managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities,
and that actually includes around a third of the remaining
intact tropical forests.
Those are the most pristine and undisturbed forests
that hold the most carbon, the most biodiversity.
Very little of that land is actually
legally recognized.
There was a study that came out recently
from the Rights and Resources Initiative
that found an additional 100 million hectares
of land have been legally recognized
as Indigenous or community owned, since 2015.
So we’ve seen a lot of successes over the past few years,
but there’s still a lot left to be done.
Deforestation is increasing every year.
Climate change is creating
drier conditions, which is creating increased threats of fire.
We have more tools than ever
to help us combat deforestation.
Better data. Better technology.
And it’s improving every day.
And one of the issues that I’m really looking at
over the next few years
is around how much finance
we can bring
to tropical forest conservation.
and specifically how much of that finance goes to the
Indigenous peoples and local communities
who are doing the best job of protecting tropical forests.
We would love to hear about more success stories
and solutions that you are working on.
Please add them to the comments
and share them with the Global Forest Watch team.