The forest is the beauty of the land. It is the abode of birds and birds. They are home to 80% of life on earth. From the deepest of their layers to the top of trees' crowns –
Forests are the heroes keeping our planet healthy, and us alive.
Forests are a barrier against erosion, landslides, and avalanches. They give us fresh air, clean the drinking water in our rivers and they attract the rain we need to grow food.
And yet, we are not treating them well. In only a couple of thousand years, humans have wiped out 80% of the planet’s original forest cover. For every vanishing forest, we lose the most important buffer against climate warming. About 2 billion rural people depend on forests to survive. It’s where they find shelter, food, and water. It’s their home. And by taking care of it, they protect them -and they take care of us, too.
This is not a forest. There are more than 800 definitions of the forest. Deciding what exactly we call forest is vitally important to protect the environment. In a forest, each individual tree has a role to play.As does every animal, every plant, every living being. Big and small.Microscopically small. Trees breathe, taking in the excess CO2 humans produce.Then, hiding some of it away and using the rest to create healthy branches, nutritious fruits, nuts, and beautiful landscapes.
The roots of trees give the soil the structure it needs to absorb and retain water when it rains.
Avoiding floods that would otherwise wash away perfectly fertile soil, which we need to grow food.
Food for us, but also for them. Together, as an ecosystem, forests provide the exact balance life needs to thrive.
And that’s why this isn’t a forest. The balance is completely disturbed. Like in any monoculture, the air feels very sticky and if you listen -it’s completely silent.
And now let’s tune into a primary forest. Animals can't thrive there because the presence of one only tree or plant species simply doesn't provide the necessary range of food, shelter, and nutrients for life to thrive.
The soil also suffers in monocultures.
Like here on the left, versus on the right - in a healthy forest. Take palm oil plantations, for example. With no other species to compete with, they suck all the water and nutrients they need, giving nothing back to the soil, which quickly loses its fertility.And by disturbing the soil, tree monocultures not only can’t absorb CO2 efficiently,
they actually emit carbon, as they are now standing where ancient forests once stood, storing carbon they captured over thousands of years. So if we were to call both of these a forest, we would be neglecting the importance of forests beyond human needs. And yet every second, the world loses about one football pitch worth of forest area.
Here’s the simple reason we’re losing forests at an alarming rate: We have disconnected our everyday life from the reality of nature.
We finance unsustainable, legal logging to plant monocultures of crops we want more of, all the time - like palm oil or soybeans. And 80% of that soy we harvest is not even for us. It’s fed to the many cattle for whom we clear most of the world’s forests to satisfy our demand for meat. The people that used to live in those forests rarely get to share the profits in whose name the forests were wiped off in the first place.
On the contrary.
They are pushed into unbearable situations in which they see no other option but to clear out forests entirely.
Their soils are now depleted, and they need more space to keep satisfying our demand, often their only source of income. But we can turn things around. We’ve seen it with our own eyes in Ecosia’s tree planting projects across continents, and endless studies confirm it:
When you empower local communities, forests are guaranteed to survive. Protecting our forests can start with you, but it’s not your responsibility alone. This is how, together,
We can make the structural changes we need to protect our forests: Support indigenous groups or associations that help them defend themselves against outside pressures.
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