How to save our forests?

One thing is sure - we need to save our forests because they play extremely important role against global warming by sinking carbon. But the question is how? How to save our forests and reduce alarming deforestation rate in many countries worldwide? The current solution looks to be big funding by rich countries that will pay for protection of forests. In theory this idea looks more than welcome but in practice there are some problems worth mentioning.

First of all if you have combination of big funds and politicians it is very logically to expect corruption as money could very easily end up in pockets of corrupted politicians rather than to be used for protection of forests. Therefore it is vital to make many different institutional and law reforms with much stricter control and transparency so that we could always know where this money is actually going.

Illegal logging is still big problem in many parts of the world, and in some areas illegal loggers are even closely connected to many politicians that get their share of profit for looking to other side. Illegal logging will be a very difficult mission because some of these organizations are extremely powerful with extremely strong political connections.

Saving our forests is one of many steps needed to stop global warming and climate change

Food is also the big problem in global efforts to stop deforestation because population is significantly increasing in many countries, more population needs more food, and many forests are being destroyed to make rooms for farms. Increased food price and higher profits are also pushing many farmers to expand their farms.

As you can see there are many different problems that needs to be solved in order to make this "pay for protection" idea successful. Otherwise there will be lot of funding, and money will end up God knows where. Deforestation is serious problem that definitely needs to be stopped but this problem has a number of "smaller problems" that need to be solved before if we want success on global level.

However rich countries must not think of forest funding as a way to pay their way out of reducing emissions, reducing deforestation is only one of many steps needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. World simply needs to act as soon as possible, not only to save our forest but to save our entire planet.