Photo:FFIGhost Forest launched recently to highlight the connection between deforestation and climate change.Ghost Forest, an original and ambitious art installation by Angela Palmer, is a collection of rainforest tree stumps from regulated, commercially logged tropical rainforests of Ghana. Dramatically placed around Trafalgar Square the negative space where the trees once stood sends a powerful message for climate change – the removal of the Earth's lungs will have a catastrophic effect.
In the lead up to the UN's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen it is vital to continue sending the message that forests the world over continue to be felled – both destroying biodiversity and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Over half of a tree's weight is carbon. When forests are cleared or burned, carbon stored within the vegetation, and within the soil, is released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Around 20 per cent of all annual global greenhouse gas emissions results from deforestation.
FFI supports the Ghost Forest and the message it is sending. FFI has long recognised the importance of forests not just for biodiversity but for the myriad of benefits they provide, including storing carbon.
Given its wealth of experience in habitat protection, FFI recognise the best way it can contribute to global efforts to combat climate change is to scale up our work in reducing emissions caused by the destruction of natural forests and other carbon-rich habitats.