New Delhi (NVI): Rainforests play an important role in keeping our planet healthy. They are carbon sinks that store and absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air and circulate more than 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen.
Every year, June 22 is observed as World Rainforest Day, to help protect rainforests and raise awareness and encourage action among the masses to protect them.
In 2017, the first World Rainforest Day was observed. It was established by a collaboration of groups called the Rainforest Partnership. The international non-profit organisation based in Austin, Texas, is dedicated to protect and regenerate tropical rainforests through community-based projects in the Amazon.
Our rainforests have sustained us for thousands of years, circulating oxygen, keeping local communities alive, absorbing carbon dioxide, and keeping our water fresh and clean.
The Rainforest Partnership has been spreading this positive message since 2007 when it launched to help protect biodiversity, indigenous people and to combat the effects of climate change.
The Amazon rainforest has existed for around 60 million years, forming when the Atlantic Ocean had expanded enough to create a tropical climate in the Amazon basin.
Around 40 football fields of rainforest is destroyed each day. It is because deforestation causes 15 per cent of the global carbon dioxide emissions that furthers climate change.
Over the past 40 years, deforestation has stripped an area of one billion hectares – about the size of Europe – from tropical rainforests.
However, restoring out rainforests has the potential to reverse global emissions by a third.
In addition to this, the day is celebrated in various ways which includes bringing up one’s knowledge by reading more about rainforests and helping the NGO’s by shopping for Rainforest Alliance Certified products.
-RJV
