Congo rainforest - Big fund against deforestation

The Congo rainforest is the world's second largest tropical rainforest (it covers about 18 % of the planet's remaining tropical rainforest) with over 600 tree species. This vast area is the heart of Africa's biodiversity and home of the many different ecosystems. However this biodiversity heaven is threatened with commercial logging, land clearing for agriculture, and frequent civil wars.

Since the 1980's Africa has the highest deforestation rate of any other region in the world, and the Congo rainforest is not exception. Current levels of deforestation are really horrifying. Imagine yourself the size of one football field. You have? Now try to imagine the size of 25,000 of football fields because this is the average size of the Congo rainforest that is cut down every week. Loss of the trees also gives more impact to global warming since the forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Congo rainforest is the second largest rainforest on earth rich with biodiversity

In order to save Congo rainforest Britain and Norway will provide £108 million and they will also supply additional satellite imaging technology to monitor the area. Such large fund should be of great help to African governments and people that live here, and it should give them acceptable alternatives to commercial logging, clearing forests for agriculture and subsistence farming.

These sort of projects are exactly what the world needs if we want to reduce carbon emissions and fight global warming and climate change. However funds alone will not be enough, and these two countries will need to control effective spending of this money. Monitoring and control will be the keys for success, and this will be a really difficult task. This difficult task also awaits African governments and different institutions, and really the whole world must do everything to save our forests because we need our forests if we want to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change and global warming.