The most effective way to stop deforestation

Summary

In this engaging video, Simon Clark tackles the dual ecological crises of climate change and biodiversity loss by highlighting the essential role of rainforests. With the damage occurring through deforestation and the destruction of crucial carbon sinks, Clark emphasizes how supporting rainforest communities, particularly indigenous ones, could be pivotal. He underscores the impactful work of Cool Earth, a charity providing unconditional cash transfers to these communities, offering an alternative to income from destructive industries. Through Cool Earth's efforts, significant areas of forest remain protected, and local economies strengthened, while maintaining essential biodiversity and carbon capture. Clark passionately advocates for supporting such initiatives as a means to combat climate change effectively.

Highlights

• Deforestation in tropical rainforests is a leading cause of carbon emissions, worsening climate change. 🌿
• Rainforests, holding over half of the world's biodiversity, are crucial to the planet's ecological balance. 🦜
• Indigenous communities play a key role in maintaining rainforest integrity but face economic pressures from extractive industries. 🏕️
• Cool Earth's innovative strategy involves direct financial support to these communities, fostering sustainable practices. 💡
• The charity's approach has maintained low deforestation rates and preserved large forest areas, showing higher efficacy than many other interventions. 🚀
• Cool Earth also equips communities with technology for forest monitoring, empowering them with data to manage resources effectively. 📡

Key Takeaways

• The biodiversity crisis and climate change are both caused by human actions, primarily through fossil fuels and deforestation. 🌍
• Rainforests are crucial carbon sinks; hence preserving them is vital to mitigating climate change. 🌳
• Cool Earth provides unconditional cash transfers to rainforest communities, empowering them to resist deforestation. 💸
• Rainforest communities, though marginalized, have a strong cultural and economic connection to their environment, crucial for forest conservation. 🏞️
• Cool Earth's approach is highly effective, shielding large forest areas and maintaining low deforestation rates. 🔍
• Supporting organizations like Cool Earth can make a significant impact in fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity. ♥️

Overview

In a world grappling with climate change and biodiversity loss, Simon Clark sheds light on the indispensable role of rainforests, focusing on these vital ecosystems' part in capturing carbon and sustaining biodiversity. The ongoing deforestation not only contributes to carbon emissions but drastically diminishes biodiversity and disrupts the global ecological balance. Rainforests are not just tree-filled landscapes; they are the lungs of the Earth and the cradles of life, with vast arrays of species depending on them. However, these green giants are under threat, primarily due to human activities.

The video introduces Cool Earth, a proactive charity offering a novel, impactful solution to conserve rainforests while supporting indigenous and local communities. This initiative doesn't just throw money at the problem; it empowers locals by providing unconditional cash transfers, encouraging them to preserve their natural environment rather than succumb to economic exploitation by logging and mining companies. By doing so, Cool Earth effectively broadens the financial avenues available to these communities, allowing them to protect their forests while also improving their living conditions.

Through Simon Clark's exploration of Cool Earth's initiatives, we see a positive shift in deforestation rates and community resilience. Cool Earth's model of prioritizing local insights and needs over externally imposed solutions appears to set a new standard in conservation. The video encourages viewers to support such efforts, suggesting that our aid can fortify these frontline defenders of the rainforest, making a tangible difference in the overarching battle against global climate change and habitat destruction.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Ecological Crises The chapter titled 'Introduction to Ecological Crises' outlines two major ecological issues: climate change and biodiversity loss. Climate change is marked by the increasing average temperature of the planet, predominantly due to human activities like burning fossil fuels, which add carbon to the atmosphere. Biodiversity loss is exemplified by the accelerated rate of species extinction, which is occurring at a rate approximately 1,000 times higher than historically normal, largely due to habitat loss caused by human actions. Both crises underscore the significant impact of human behavior on the environment.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Rainforests: A Vital Carbon Sink The chapter discusses the dual crises of environmental destruction and climate change, particularly focusing on rainforests. It highlights that while fossil fuel burning is a major cause of climate change, the degradation of rainforests, which serve as vital carbon sinks, exacerbates the problem. The damage to these forests, which naturally absorb carbon, results in increased positive emissions, underscoring the global significance of preserving tropical forests.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Importance of Protecting Rainforests Rainforests play a critical role in the global carbon cycle, accounting for nearly half of the land-based carbon sink. However, they are being destroyed at an alarming rate, with an area twice the size of New Zealand lost in the past decade. In some deforested areas of the Amazon, rainforests have even become net carbon emitters rather than carbon absorbers. The loss of rainforests also means the destruction of complex ecosystems and rich biodiversity, as over half of the world’s species inhabit tropical regions.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Community Role in Rainforest Conservation The chapter emphasizes the critical role of protecting pristine rainforests due to their diminished ability to function effectively as carbon sinks once they are damaged. It also highlights the slow recovery of biodiversity compared to the relatively rapid regrowth of trees. The protection of untouched rainforests is presented as essential for tackling climate change and preventing species extinction, despite the feeling of powerlessness individuals may experience.
• 04:30 - 06:00: Challenges Faced by Rainforest Communities The chapter addresses the environmental and socio-economic challenges faced by rainforest communities, primarily focusing on the issue of deforestation. Visual media has increased global awareness, but the geographical and societal distance from the problem complicates individual actions. Economic forces such as agriculture and resource demand exacerbate deforestation, although there are positive signs as global efforts have reduced emissions from land use change by 30% since 2000, indicating progress in curbing deforestation.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Cool Earth's Approach to Rainforest Conservation The chapter discusses the urgent need to protect all remaining tropical forests to maintain manageable levels of climate change. It highlights the importance of making an effective difference by focusing on the most neglected aspect of climate negotiations: empowering communities indigenous to rainforests, who are on the front line of conservation efforts, to preserve these crucial carbon sinks.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Effectiveness and Impact of Cool Earth This chapter explores the diverse communities residing in rainforests, highlighting the common challenges they face, including marginalization, discrimination, malnutrition, disease, and poverty. It challenges stereotypical images of indigenous people, emphasizing the diversity among these populations.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Ground News Sponsorship The chapter titled 'Ground News Sponsorship' challenges prevalent stereotypes about certain communities. It emphasizes that these communities share the same aspirations and concerns as others. The people are often bilingual or multilingual, industrious, and have diverse career experiences even far from their hometowns. The chapter concludes that these communities are fundamentally like any other, with similar wants and needs.
• 18:00 - 19:30: Closing Remarks and Call to Action The chapter discusses the challenges faced by individuals in participating in the global economy due to limited earning options. It highlights the interest of various industries, such as mining, logging, and agriculture, in exploiting rainforest resources for profit. The chapter also mentions the adverse conditions, like high malaria levels, impacting these regions.

The most effective way to stop deforestation Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Two ecological crises are unfolding before our eyes. Climate change, the average temperature of the planet increasing, and biodiversity loss. Species are going extinct at a rate approximately 1,000 times greater than occurred in the recent past, and that is likely an underestimate. Both of these crises are caused by humans. Climate change is overwhelmingly caused by humans burning fossil fuels and adding their carbon to the atmosphere. While the ongoing sixth mass extinction is caused by habitat loss, humans
• 00:30 - 01:00 destroying the natural world, especially for agriculture. But these two crises do have something else in common, rainforests. While the overwhelming cause of climate change has been our burning of fossil fuels, at the same time we have been damaging those parts of the planet that naturally suck carbon out of the air, what we call carbon sinks. By removing effectively negative emissions, we have been adding positive emissions that are globally significant. And the most important carbon sink that we've been damaging is tropical forest
• 01:00 - 01:30 around the world. It accounts for almost half the land-based carbon sink and we are destroying it at an incredible rate. In the past decade, we have destroyed an area of rainforest twice the size of New Zealand. While in the Amazon, some parts of the rainforest are now so deforested that at times they are net carbon emitters rather than carbon sinks. And with that forest loss, enormously complex and rich ecosystems of beautiful flora and fauna are lost, too. Over half the world's species live in tropical
• 01:30 - 02:00 forests. The density of life is astonishing. And when a rainforest is lost, while the trees can grow back relatively quickly, A, their potential as a carbon sync has been demonstrated to be vastly less, and B, the rich biodiversity takes much longer to recover. So protecting unspoiled rainforest is of vital importance to both climate change and preventing species from going extinct. It's a no-brainer. But we feel powerless to
• 02:00 - 02:30 stop deforestation in the tropics. We see the pictures on our screens and want to help, but we are so far removed from the problem and the forces leading to deforestation, agriculture, and demand for natural resources seem so inevitable. Yet, as I mentioned in a previous video, the world is making tangible progress curbing deforestation. Our emissions due to land use change, about half of which come from deforestation, have decreased by 30% since the year 2000. But reduce isn't
• 02:30 - 03:00 enough. We need to protect all remaining tropical forests or risk jeopardizing the already slim chances we have of keeping climate change to a manageable level. But there is a way you can make a truly effective difference today to preserving the most important carbon sync on Earth. And it all has to do with the most neglected part of climate negotiations to date, communities on the front line. specifically communities indigenous to rainforests. It's
• 03:00 - 03:30 estimated that globally 50 million people live in or depend on rainforests, a hugely diverse group of people. But those communities have several things in common. They have historically been marginalized, discriminated against from colonial times up to the present day, and suffer from higher rates of malnutrition, disease, and poverty. And while you probably have a mental image of what an indigenous person living in the rainforest looks like, it's probably not accurate. There are a whole range of
• 03:30 - 04:00 stereotypes that we carry around very easily which need to be challenged. The people who live there have exactly the same aspirations and concerns as we do. They're generally, you know, at least bilingual, very often multilingual. They're incredibly um industrious and have often had careers that involved jobs in towns and cities, you know, sometimes many hundreds miles away. In short, these communities are very much like you and me. They have the same wants and needs as us, and they are part
• 04:00 - 04:30 of the global economy just like us. Unfortunately, however, they have very limited options when it comes to earning money to participate in that economy. I mean mining and and logging or forestry or even agricultural companies, you know, looking to to turn land into big agricultural fields, they all live in the same area. I mean, these companies are very interested in the rainforest and the the resources on that land can turn quite a lot of profit. And if you're at a really low E, if as we've seen in the past, you have very high levels of malaria. If you have
• 04:30 - 05:00 malnutrition, then they're the only acting town. They're the only people who are providing cash and often selling out to loggers or miners or ranchers is an entirely rational position that I can guarantee you or I would do exactly the same thing in their position. Unfortunately, of course, accepting money from these logging companies leads to the destruction of the rainforest carbon sink and that leads to climate change both globally and locally. Something that these communities are very aware of and don't want. their
• 05:00 - 05:30 entire knowledge systems, their entire spiritualities, their entire practices depend on a healthy environment. But it's that special relationship which has evolved over thousands of years. They've been seeing the changes day in day out for decades now. And that's simply because um so much of the world's weather is produced in those places. So for example, desiccation of uh the canopy means that uh rain just doesn't fall in the way that it used to in some parts of the world. And in Papa Newu Guinea um sometimes they have two three
• 05:30 - 06:00 um month dry periods which was unheard of. Equally the flooding events are terrifying and these have been a real wakeup call in terms of just how resilient communities can be to these uh terrifying changes. So if these communities were given an alternative to accepting money from mining and logging companies even if it's less money whereby they don't have to lose their trees and damage their land they will take it. And that is exactly what a charity called Cool Earth is offering.
• 06:00 - 06:30 Important disclaimer, this video is not sponsored by Cool Earth, and they have had no editorial control over it. I learned about Cool Earth last year in the Oxcast Jingle Jam and have spent the past several weeks and months learning about the charity, talking to the team, and interviewing key players. This video representing my personal opinion. I think that they're a great charity, and I want to explain why. Firstly, you've been hearing from members of Cool Earth based down in Cormal here in the UK, but they are a global charity with offices
• 06:30 - 07:00 in Peru and Papa Newu Guinea where they operate in the Amazon and Papuan rainforests respectively. And they also operate in a number of countries in central Africa. And what they do is really simple. So, Cool Earth is a high impact charity that bets on the most effective way of keeping rainforest standing. What KOF does that very few other charities do, particularly in the world in the the sort of environmental sector or the climate sector, is that we deliver unconditional cash transfers, a cash payment that you deliver to to people, to households or to to
• 07:00 - 07:30 communities with no strings attached. If you're unfamiliar with unconditional cash transfers, I actually made a whole video about the subject last year that does a deep dive on the subject and answers some common questions. Though in this specific case you may wonder as I did what can you do with cash in a rainforest? There will be local economies. There will be traders. There will maybe shops. People do set up their own shops and trade goods. People visit cities, collect things from there and then sell. So this all feeds into this
• 07:30 - 08:00 local economy. People were buying you know sacks of rice to have in reserve. people were buying tools to make sure that they could actually um you know prune and clear um the dead wood on their cacao trees um far more efficiently. There also things though that surprise us. Water tanks what were once 100year events in terms of droughts and indeed in flooding are now becoming almost you know every other year. They fill up in the rainy season and then often see um people through the very long dry spells that they experience over there. the premise that Call Earth is based on that people do know what
• 08:00 - 08:30 they need better than we could ever say. Understanding that just as we would regard cash as the most agile resource we have, which is why we ask for that to be, you know, the way in which we're paid at the end of each month, exactly the same applies to um people living in rainforests. So, the idea is simple. give communities who share a deep connection with their environment an alternative to accepting money from extractive industries and keep that money coming year after year to both protect the rainforest and help those communities adapt to a changing climate.
• 08:30 - 09:00 The question is how effective is this? And the answer is very by design. You see there's enormous diversity in the communities that live in tropical forests. Some communities remove large sections of forests in order to make a living, especially through agriculture, but also to collect raw materials, while others barely remove any trees at all. Cool Earth only works with communities that have very low forest loss rates, removing as little as 1% of forest area for their own needs. Well, you're trying to prevent future deforestation. So,
• 09:00 - 09:30 these communities, even if with low forest loss rates, are at risk. In fact, they're probably more at risk because people eyeing them up and going, "Oh, this is fertile ground to exploit." I mean, these people resisting the threats, the threats to their territories is something very compelling at this stage. So, Koulath basically says, "We love what you're doing. Please keep protecting this untouched forest and in so doing improves the resilience of those communities to the growing threats to that forest. And there's
• 09:30 - 10:00 plenty of evidence to suggest that this approach is highly effective even when offering less money than the mining and logging companies." So in terms of carbon, I think cumulatively, so over an entire existence, we've probably kept about half a billion tons of carbon locked in. In terms of forest, it's about 2.1 million acres that these people protect. And what we're seeing is we're 70 to 80% more effective than any other approach to keeping forest standing in those areas. In many of our partnerships, we're seeing deforestation
• 10:00 - 10:30 rates of 1% or less. And the reason we have such extraordinary impact is because local people are fully in control of their forest. And it's worth noting that Cool Earth doesn't just provide cash transfers to these communities. They also lies with them in the rainforest monitoring project. This makes satellite data on deforestation and wildfires in particular available to rainforest communities who would otherwise be in the dark and can use that information. There's data from the
• 10:30 - 11:00 ground or or from the field that is collected by our partners and then there's data that is uh available uh from various uh satellite imagery. Most of that is processed by big institutions like the University of Maryland with their global forest watch data sets. These communities then told us that it would be really helpful for them to have access to this uh data independently. Obviously, data is a really good validation tool outside of Cool Earth
• 11:00 - 11:30 support. If they thought that these fires were getting worse, but they didn't have access to the data to demonstrate it, they might have struggled to get help from other potential funders. The most recent iteration of the project was in Papy New Guinea. So, they quite want to use the lab to document their own species. uh they want to create a herbarium where they they kind of take samples of of lots of different plants and enable this knowledge exchange with uh different universities and and expand it to local
• 11:30 - 12:00 schools and stuff like that. So there's a lot of really interesting kind of ideas and directions the project can go in. So all of the data that we provide to the communities belongs to them and stays with them. So if if they were interested in sharing back with cool earth then that would be something that we'd be interested in. But our uh support and our provision of the data is not contingent on them providing verification for these models. We provide it to them and then whatever
• 12:00 - 12:30 they need to do with it or whatever they whatever they want to do with that information they can do. Yeah. In talking to the people at cool earth it becomes very clear that their approach is effective and already covers a large area of rainforest but could be expanded to include much much more. There are huge numbers of indigenous and local communities living in the rainforest throughout the world who are the finest possible chance we have of keeping those forest standing. As simple as that. We can put 101 different interventions in
• 12:30 - 13:00 place and they'll do pretty well. But none of them will exceed the impact that local people have to keep their forest standing on a long-term multigenerational view. If Cool Earth had a larger budget, they could expand their operations, working with more rainforest communities, protect more forest. And because their approach is so simple and so flexible on the ground, we can be confident that it would continue to be effective. Of course, if you would like to help them with that, make a donation to Cool Earth. Visit our website ww.coolearth.org/donate and make a
• 13:00 - 13:30 difference today. But also, as well as being able to donate there and then you can get in touch with the team. I'm always very keen to talk to prospective donors and we have an extraordinary able fundraising team who would be delighted to answer any question you have and indeed put you in touch with people on the ground who will tell you in even more detail. As I said before, this video is my personal opinion. I really like what Cool Earth do. As I've made a whole video about before, unconditional cash transfers are a highly effective way of getting aid where it is needed and empowering communities. In this case
• 13:30 - 14:00 specifically, Cool Earth is empowering communities who are on the front lines of climate change affected by our crisis, but also communities who have historically been marginalized and almost completely excluded from climate finance discussions. The charity is categorically both climate adaptation, helping those communities on the front lines already affected by climate change, and climate mitigation, keeping carbon in the ground and maintaining our natural carbon sinks. And as longtime viewers of this channel will know,
• 14:00 - 14:30 preventing species loss is a really important topic to me, and it's almost a side effect of all the other wonderful benefits. If you're looking for a way to feel less helpless in the fight against climate change and deforestation, I think Cool Earth is an excellent place to invest in the future of our planet. Unless you watched the OGscast Jingle Jam last year, you have almost certainly never heard of Cool Earth. And that is partly because of how climate change and its solutions are discussed in the news. Depending on where you get your news
• 14:30 - 15:00 from, you will see emphasis placed on different kinds of climate solution or even different aspects of the same solution. For example, this month the International Maritime Organization agreed for the first time to attacks on emissions from international shipping with revenue going towards developing the necessary cleaner shipping tech that doesn't exist yet. Most coverage of this was by media outlets considered centrist in the American media landscape and that were known to be factually accurate in their reporting. However, again with reference to the American landscape,
• 15:00 - 15:30 those publications on the political right framed this as a overreach of global authority and a financial burden, while those on the political left frame this as a necessary step to decarbonizing international shipping while also criticizing it for maybe not going far enough. It may also not surprise regular viewers of this channel to learn that those publications on the political right were noted as having a lower factuality. I can tell you all of this because of the sponsor that made
• 15:30 - 16:00 this video possible, Ground News. Ground News is a website and app designed by a former NASA engineer to give you a datadriven perspective on the news you consume, allowing you to spot and circumvent biases and highlighting the factual accuracy of your sources. According to three independent news monitoring organizations for the story about the tax on shipping, for example, we can easily see the breakdown of who is covering this and how, as well as who owns those media organizations. I've used ground news for 2 years now, and it's easy to recommend. I really value
• 16:00 - 16:30 it. And in particular, I really value their blind spot feature, which highlights stories that based on my past news consumption, I've probably missed. And that's really valuable when it comes to covering the climate crisis for my job. It means that I get exposed to different kinds of solutions. But it also means that I don't fall into echo chambers online and I sometimes get my beliefs challenged by the news which makes me stronger. I value the service I get from ground news and I think you will too. And what's more, you can get
• 16:30 - 17:00 yourself a 40% discount on a Vantage subscription by signing up at ground.news/simonclark which is linked in the description and in the QR code on screen. By signing up, not only do you support me and cut through the media landscape, you also support an independent news organization working to make that landscape more transparent. That link again, ground.news/simonclark. Please do check it out. Thank you so much for watching. Normally, this is where I would plug my
• 17:00 - 17:30 Patreon and say if you would like to support my work, you can sign up there and thank the people who have made this video possible. Um, and I would like to do that last part. Thank you very much, patrons. But on this occasion, I would instead like to reiterate my call for you to support Cool Earth. Their work is much more important than what I do. Though, as always, I will shout out three patrons. Thank you, Michael S. Louise K, and Marked. What a name. If you'd like to watch something else from me, then here's two videos I prepared earlier. That just leaves me to say thank you
• 17:30 - 18:00 again for watching and I'll see you in the next