Top U.S. ecologists ask President Obama to include tropical forests in climate policy

New York, NY — Dozens of top U.S. ecologists published an open letter to President Barack Obama Wednesday calling on the U.S. administration to seize the historical moment and take decisive action to link tropical forest conservation to global efforts to stop climate change.

The ecologists’ letter is part of a rising tide of public support for a comprehensive approach to the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from tropical forest destruction.

Government, civil society and business leaders from all over the world are convening in New York Wednesday to rally support for tropical forest conservation with a series of events, including a high-level U.N. event on reducing emissions from tropical deforestation hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

“The handwriting on the wall says we need the living planet — especially forests — to address climate change,” said Tom Lovejoy, a leading voice among U.S. ecologists who signed the letter President Obama.

Wednesday’s events aim to focus global attention on the need for large-scale, sustainable solutions to the problem of reducing emissions from tropical deforestation, which causes roughly 15 percent of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

President Obama met with Ban Ki-Moon and other world leaders Tuesday for the U.N.’s first global Climate Day summit in New York, part of a week of events to draw attention to climate change.

The ecologists’ letter sends a targeted message to the U.S. President from the nation’s foremost ecologists signaling they understand the potential of climate policy approaches to advance the conservation of pristine forest.

“We are facing an ecological and a climate crisis, and we have the knowledge to act wisely, but we need decisive global political leadership to get the job done,” said Steve Hamburg Chief Scientist of Environmental Defense Fund. “We need global climate policies to conserve tropical biodiversity.”

Tropical forests house more than half of the world’s species and serve as storehouses of unique natural resources, providing food, fiber, medicines, and ecosystem services to the globe.

A growing number of scientists, policymakers and civil society leaders agree that linking tropical forest conservation to climate policies is the best way to protect these natural storehouses and buffer the human impacts of climatic shifts.

Andrea Welsh / 202-572-3230 / awelsh@edf.org