Forests

Our forests are in crisis. Climate change, deforestation and damage from wildfires, in places like the Amazon, Congo and the rainforests of South East Asia are having devastating impacts for wildlife, water supply, food production, livelihoods and the stability of the global climate system.

In our largest rainforest, The Amazon, when forest is lost a vicious cycle becomes established. The more forest that is lost, the less rainfall is produced by the forest and drought and fire effects cause even more forest losses. This loop could cause the entire Amazon forest biome to reach a tipping point where it's lost to a state of permanent degradation.

On top of that, many surviving forests have been so damaged and degraded that the plants and animals that rely on them are threatened with extinction. Over time these remaining forests are being emptied of the wildlife that once called them home.

• We can stop their destruction by changing the way we finance and use them.  
• We should support healthy forests in nations and territories where they are still found, through global economic systems that keep them managed sustainably; protecting them and the biodiversity they are home to.
• We must urgently and carefully restore forests in places where they have been lost.  
• We need to strengthen the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and reduce poverty, so that all forest peoples can benefit from and protect the forests in which they live, as we know that the forests that are doing best are often under their stewardship.

In the UK, we should enact laws that protect our forests from destruction to make way for food production. Our government already has a potential law which is yet to be brought into force which would force food companies to take responsibility for deforestation. We need you to email Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, demanding that he enact the law.