why tropical forests matter

What are tropical forests?

Tropical forests are landscapes with a somewhat closed canopy-cover in tropical regions. They can be found approximately between 23.5 degrees South and North of the equator, though prevailing wind and rain patterns modify these boundaries.

Tropical forests encompass a range of different ecosystems: mangroves inhabiting the intertidal areas of tropical coasts, montane forests, dry tropical forests, peat forests, seasonally flooded forests, upland evergreen rainforests and many more.

In other words, there is not one tropical forest but many.

Biodiversity

Besides the diversity on the ecosystem level (different forest types and related ecosystems), tropical forests are home to a vast number of different species: plants, animals, fungi, microbes, etc. There are some impressive examples of species diversity found in tropical forests, particularly tropical rainforests, such as 1 200 species of beetles found on a single tree species, or 365 different tree species discovered in a 1-ha plot.

Dry and moist tropical and subtropical forests are hotspots of biodiversity, including high numbers of threatened species.

And then we haven’t even talked about the genetic diversity.

Livelihoods, ecosystem services, and indigenous people

Apart from the intrinsic value which can be ascribed to the forests and their diversity, tropical forests are important for us humans in many regards and on various scales.

Globally, tropical forests play a role for climate mitigation and the global carbon cycle due to their ability to take up carbon from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen back to it, having provided them with the title as the green lungs of the Earth. On the other hand, deforestation and degradation of tropical forests are a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. By halting deforestation and degradation of tropical forests, 10-12% of global greenhouse gas emissions can be avoided.

Tropical forests further play a role for atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns as well as water cycling.

Regionally, tropical forests prevent soil erosion and are important for regulating water flows, preventing flooding (e.g. coastal mangroves) and constituting an important source of water supply to people living around them, e.g. the remaining montane forests in East Africa.

Locally, many people’s livelihoods are closely linked to tropical forests as the forest provide various timber and non-timber forest products, such as firewood, food, or medicinal plants. Beyond provisioning, supporting, and regulating ecosystem services, tropical forests play a relational and non-material role, for spirituality, reflection, cognitive development, or recreation.

In tropical rainforests alone, there are about 1 000 indigenous communities (50 million people). The number of people relying on tropical forests for their livelihoods is even higher. People living adjacent to tropical forests get as much as 1/5 of their income from the forests.

Even though these scales appear separate, both the scales and functions are closely connected. This means that on the one side, protecting tropical forests is beneficial in many ways, but also that it has devastating and cascading effects if they are lost.

Indigenous peoples and local communities can serve as guardians of the rainforest. Where Indigenous peoples' and local communities’ rights to their lands are upheld, the rainforest are preserved. Supporting their fight to defend their rights and protect their land, is a vital part of saving the remaining rainforests.

Threats to tropical forests

The world’s tropical forests are under severe threats and rapidly disappearing because of human activity. According to the Global Forest Watch, 4.1 million hectares of tropical primary forests were lost in 2022. To get an idea, this is equivalent to losing eleven football fields of forest per minute, so roughly one every 5-6 seconds.

When tropical forests are destroyed, cultural and biological diversity as well as one of our most effective tools to limit climate change are lost. With this manifold importance of tropical forests on various scales on the one side, and a complexity of direct and indirect drivers behind their loss on the other side, a lot can be gained by combining different perspectives, skills, and expertise in order to jointly work towards the conservation of tropical forests.