Did you notice that yesterday was International Forest Day? Unfortunately that message got a bit lost in all the concern about Coronavirus, so I’ll just talk a bit about it here. The two events are not unconnected. For example, John Vidal, writing in the Guardian, notes that it is precisely activities such as the clearing of rainforest which exposes humans to hitherto unknown pathogens, Ebola being a case in point and Zika another. What forests do for us There is no doubt that forests are repositories of boundless diversity with up to 80% of the world’s plants, insects and animals being found there, but they also do many things for us, apart from supplying timber, firewood, food, paper, packaging, medicine and even fibre. They all sequester carbon and the Amazon alone – what’s left of it, supplies around 20% of the world’s oxygen. They trap pollutants and clean the air and influence weather and rainfall. They also trap and filter water, slow run –off, bind so...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people