2011, the year of forests

by Annalisa Audino

2011 will be the International Year devoted to the Green Lungs of the Planet. Never as now the attention to the environment and its resources is important, in particular after the last Asian events and the continuous debates on the pollution and on the exhaustion of the sources of energy. The rich calendar of events, debates, conferences and publications has officially been introduced to the Forum Onu on the forests, begun last week to the Glass Building in New York.

Last year had been devoted to the biodiversity and it had seen the 193 delegates to the tenth conference of Convention U.N. (Cop10) of Nagoya to assume a great appointment to work for the protection of at least the 17% of the terrestrial areas and the 10% of the oceans areas within 2020 and to increase the projects and the initiatives to safeguard all over the world the ecosystems and the biodiversities. 2011 will move the reflectors instead on the forests: according to the last data of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the forests produce a direct economic value (food, fuel, medicines, energy, earnings and occupation) esteemed in 130 million dollars the year, equal around in the gold reserves of France and Switzerland.

«The air that we breathe - Julia Marton-Lefevre, general manager of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has explained - the food, the water, the climate that conditions our life and our future they depend all on the forests. 2011 must be the year when the world recognizes the vital importance of forests in health for the life on the Planet, for all the populations and the biodiversity».

In effects the forests absorb good part of CO2 and they develop a crucial function in the struggle against the climatic changes.

«The forests - Stewart Maginnis of the Iucn has declared - offer the widest, fast and effective tools to contain the global issues. To halve the greenhouse gases between 2010 and 2020 it would bring to a saving of 3,7 thousand of million of dollars. The problem is that the governments and the agencies of donors don't consider the investment in forest activity checked to local level. In this way they lose the opportunity to relaunch economic growth, sustainable development and poverty reduction».

The logo of the initiative is a tree: it is designed to convey the theme of “Forests for People” celebrating the central role of people in the sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of our world’s forests. The iconographic elements in the design depict some of the multiple values of forests and the need for a 360°degree perspective: forests provide shelter to people and habitat to biodiversity; they are a source of food, medicine and clean water and play a vital role in maintaining a stable global climate and environment. All of these elements taken together reinforce the message that forests are vital to the survival and well being of people everywhere, all 7 billion of us.