Amazon Canopy. Warwick Lister-Kaye / istockphoto.com.
With 2020 fast approaching, countries, companies, and other stakeholders are taking stock of their climate commitments. As they consider ways to meet and enhance climate goals, interest in net zero emissions commitments and carbon removal technologies has grown. But what these discussions reveal is that forests are crucial. Capable of significantly reducing net emissions at a low marginal cost, and in the short-term, forests are an important piece of the climate change mitigation puzzle.
This year, tropical forests have dominated the spotlight. The forest fires raging throughout Brazil, Bolivia, and Indonesia are part of a disturbing trend: despite commitments from governments and companies, deforestation is still on the rise globally. Key forest ecosystems such as the Amazon continue to face the pressures of crop expansion for agricultural production, illegal extractive activities like timber harvesting and mining, relaxed legal enforcement and weakened environmental policies.
As deforestation persists, the planet’s capacity to absorb carbon pollution diminishes and more carbon is being released; tree cover loss in tropical forests accounts for about 16 to 33 percent of global emissions. We should be alarmed. But we should also be hopeful. Here are a few reasons why:
Over the course of my professional career, I have observed several protest events. The Global Climate Strike on September 20th marked my first experience as an active, marching, sign-holding protest participant. When I confessed this to one of my colleagues in the NYC office, she rightly asked the question: What took you so long? Good question. Let’s just say that it was an amazing way to cap my fourth week of employment with EDF!The day before the Climate Strike, I had a brief meet and greet with 
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published yet another alarming report about the dangers we face from the climate crisis.
