These local landholders hold the key to a valuable solution as the world tries to slow climate change – restoring deforested tropical landscapes for a healthier future.
While those trees may be lost, the land still has potential. Tropical forests’ combination of year-round sunshine and high rainfall can lead to high growth rates, suggesting that areas where tropical forests once grew could be valuable sites for reforestation. In fact, a host of international agreements and declarations envision just this.
For reforestation projects to make a dent in climate change, however, they have to work with and for the people who live there.
As forestecologistsinvolved in tropical forest restoration, we have been studying effective ways to compensate people for the ecosystem services flowing from their land. In a new study, we show how compensation that also allows landholders to harvest and sell some of the trees could provide powerful incentives and ultimately benefit everyone.
The extraordinary value of ecosystem services
Tropical forests are celebrated for their extraordinary biodiversity, with their preservation seen as essential for protecting life on Earth. They are reservoirs of vast carbon stocks, slowing down climate change. However, when tropical forests are cleared and burned, they release copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change.
These local landholders hold the key to a valuable solution as the world tries to slow climate change – restoring deforested tropical landscapes for a healthier future.
While those trees may be lost, the land still has potential. Tropical forests’ combination of year-round sunshine and high rainfall can lead to high growth rates, suggesting that areas where tropical forests once grew could be valuable sites for reforestation. In fact, a host of international agreements and declarations envision just this.
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