One of the most important recent climate change initiatives to emerge from the UK in recent months is ‘The Prince’s Rainforest project’  You can read all about it here.  You can also sign up to send your own 'Rain Forest SOS'

The Prince is Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, who has always taken a keen interest in environmental matters.  He initiated the current project to raise awareness of the contribution that rainforests make to keeping our climate stable and to draw attention at the rate at which the trees are being cut down.  

Here is a film from the website, cast in the form of an airline safety video, that illustrates the main themes of the project.  If the video doesn't play you can click on this link

Rainforests around the world are being destroyed at an alarming rate. This is increasingly due to destructive logging operations and conversion of the land for farming use. 

Two thousand square metres are being lost every second - a fact illustrated graphically by the counter on the banner at the top of the website.  This deforestation releases more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than all the world’s transportation.  

Prince Charles’ message is that if we can only halt this deforestation we should be making a massive contribution to combatting climate change besides preserving all the benefits of standing rain forests - as a habitat for wildlife and as a sustainable source of livelihood.

The world’s population is likely to increase from 6 billion to 9 billion over the next 40 years. This population growth, combined with rising incomes, will lead to a continual increasing demand for food, animal feed and fuel. And this, in turn, will lead to more destruction of rainforests – with devastating effects for everyone.

The aim of the project is to gather as many signatures as possible and already many famous names have signed up to the project.  It is particularly important to be able to demonstrate at Copenhagen the strength of public feeling and anger over the destruction of virgin forest.

The Prince’s Rainforests Project believes that emergency funding is needed to help protect rainforests and to encourage rainforest nations to continue to develop without the need for deforestation.  

At the end of the day the solution must be commercial. The forest has to become more profitable to nations, companies and individuals, intact and standing, than cut-down and burnt.
One billion of the poorest people on Earth depend on the rainforests for their livelihoods, they say. If we don’t take action, we could lose another 100 million hectares of tropical forests over the next 10 years – that’s an area the size of Egypt.

Saving the rainforests will give the world a better chance to achieve its goals of stabilising climate change, while also preserving important ecosystem benefits, not to mention the fact that over The need for action is urgent.

I do hope therefore that you will sign up and persuade others to sign up too.  It is one positive action that everyone can do today to help fight climate change and to prserve these most wonderful of the earth’ assets.  And in recognition of the wild life under threat you can even record your own ‘frog’ message.  

The photograph of logging is © Daniel Beltrá