Covering 31 percent of the Earth’s land and providing home to 80 percent of all land-based species, forests are essential to human health and well-being, but their loss across the globe threatens people everywhere.
Here are five things you need to know about the age-old and ever-growing relationship between forests and human health.
Forests are key to building climate resilience.
1. Cut carbon to fight climate change
Forest ecosystems keep the planet healthy by regulating climate, rainfall patterns, and water flows and essentially provide oxygen that is essential to human existence.
Healthy forests help keep climate change in check by acting as “carbon sinks”, which absorb about two billion tons of carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to climate change and increased global temperatures.
A rapidly changing climate threatens people’s lives in many different ways: through death and illness due to extreme weather events, disruption of food systems, and an increase in diseases. In short, without healthy forests, people around the world, especially in the world’s most vulnerable countries, will struggle to live a healthy life and perhaps even to survive.
Forest products are processed into medicine in Viet Nam.
2. Nature’s pharmacies: from masks to medicine cabinets
From masks to medicines, herbal products are used all over the world every day. About 80 percent of developing countries and a quarter of developed countries depend on plant-based medicines.
The forests contain about 50,000 plant species that are used for medicinal purposes by local communities and national pharmaceutical companies. For thousands of years, forest dwellers have treated many ailments using the products they have harvested. At the same time, many common pharmaceutical drugs are rooted in wild plants, including cancer drugs from Madagascar periwinkle and the antimalarial, quinine, from cinchona trees.
The One Health Approach, launched as part of the UN’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, recognizes that the health of people, animals, plants, and the wider environment, including forests, are closely linked and interdependent.
A woman carries luggage through the Uluguru Nature Reserve in Morogoro, Tanzania.
3. Dinner for 1 billion people
Nearly one billion people around the world rely on gathering wild foods such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, meat, and other insects for nutritious food. In some far tropical regions, consumption of wild animals is estimated to cover between 60 and 80 per cent of daily protein needs.
A study of 43,000 families across 27 African countries found that the dietary diversity of children exposed to forests was 25 percent lower than those who were not.
In 22 countries in Asia and Africa, including both industrialized and developing countries, researchers found that indigenous communities consume an average of 120 wild foods per area, and in India, an estimated 50 million families supplement their diet with fruits collected from wild forests and the surrounding area. forest house
Communities in Timor-Leste are helping to restore mangrove forests.
4. Forests are important for sustainable development
Forests provide goods and services, employment, and income for about 2.5 billion people worldwide; that’s almost a third of the world’s population.
Keeping forests – and people – healthy is also at the heart of sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda. Woodlands play a key role in making progress across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including:
SDG 3 Well-being: Woodlands feel good. Studies show that spending time in the woods can boost the immune system while raising positive emotions and reducing stress, blood pressure, depression, fatigue, anxiety, and tension. Human health and well-being depend on the natural environment, which provides such important benefits as clean air, water, healthy homes, and food.
SDG 6 Water: Forests play a crucial role in providing fresh water. About 85 percent of the world’s water comes from forests. By feeding rivers, forests provide drinking water for nearly half of the world’s largest cities. Threats to forests can cause water shortages and put the world’s fresh water resources at risk for people around the world, which are among the urgent issues to be addressed at the upcoming 2023 UN Water Summit.
SDG 13 Climate action: The tree buffers the effects of storms and floods, protecting human health and safety during extreme weather events. For centuries, forests have served as a natural and economic safety net in times of crisis. Sustainable and protected forests mean improved health and safety for all.
Deforestation continues despite international calls to protect forests.
5. Forests need protection
The wide benefits of forests are well known, but that does not mean that they are given the protection they deserve. Fire, pest damage and deforestation have accounted for 150 million hectares of forest loss in the last few decades, that’s more than the landmass of countries like Chad or Peru. The production of agricultural products alone, including palm oil, beef, soy, wood, and pulp and paper, drives around 70 percent of tropical deforestation.
Many governments have adopted forest-friendly policies, and others have increased investment in timber and trees. Local communities and artists are making their own improvements, sometimes one tree at a time. The UN established the Decade for Ecological Restoration (2021-2023) and its agencies are making partnerships with the environment to the world’s stakeholders to better protect the forests, from planting three million trees in Peru to power for young people to work as local forest guards to protect illegal animals. trafficking in Indonesia.
Established in 2008, UN-REDD is the flagship UN philosophy and advisory partnership on forests and climate, supporting 65 partner countries. It is based on the advice of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), the UN Development Program, and the Organization Food and Agriculture (FAO), the initiative has, among other things, member countries have reduced forest emissions at levels equivalent to removing 150 million cars. on the road for a year, ushering in a lot of fresh air.
For guidance on creating an enabling environment in which people can benefit from all that forests have to offer, FAO offers recommendations alongside a closer look at several key links between forests and human health in its report, Forests for human health and well-being.
