Much like the body’s vital organs, Tropical Forests are small yet life determining. These ecosystems could easily be re-dubbed “Our Most Concentrated Life Support Systems.” While currently covering less than 5% of our planet, tropical forests manage to:

Create and sustain 50% of biodiversity

Sequester 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses

Contain 55% of forest stored greenhouse gasses

Produce 20 to 30% of our oxygen

Produce +2,000 foods for human consumption

Produce at least 20% of global freshwater

Circulate water vapor and precipitation around our entire planet

Absorb more heat than any other land-based ecosystem

Regulate and reduce more storms than any other ecosystem.

Mile per mile tropical forests do more for us than any other living system. All of this life-determining productivity conspires to define the security of global food production and is tremendously impactful on all weather-reliant enterprises, such as: electricity transmission, global trade and the Internet.

Such symbiotic productivity can only take place in wilderness. It is a little known fact that wild ecosystems are our life support systems and that there is no substitute for the life sustaining services their biodiversity provide, especially those of Tropical Forests. Our biggest climate solution is to restore the tropical forests, our biggest life support system, currently 50% smaller than they were just 50 years ago.

Read the full abstract on Google docs.

See a 2 minute synopsis on YouTube:

Your comments and questions appreciated.