Deforestation

• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230925966024/en/
  Re-illustrated image from "Winnie-the-Pooh: The Deforested Edition" by Who Gives A Crap.
• Who Gives A Crap is, however, the first to update a piece of classic literature to reflect environmental changes.
• A. Milne remains unchanged, the illustrations are reimagined to represent the consequences of traditional toilet paper production on the thinning of forests.
• The revision also extends to the iconic Hundred Acre Wood map, depicting the widespread impact on all of Winnie-the-Pooh's friends.

• This process, called fragmentation, is causing the deepest and darkest parts of the world’s forests to shrink.
• Forest fragmentation is bad news for many unique animal and plant species that rely on these forests for their survival.
• It also reduces the forest’s ability to capture and store carbon, which is an important part of tackling climate change.
• Researchers from Fudan University in China recently conducted a study that mapped changes in global forest fragmentation between 2000 and 2020.

Measuring a forest

• This is a common way to identify forests but has a limitation: it doesn’t distinguish between different forest types.
• In fact, a study conducted in the Mekong region of south-east Asia found that, in most cases, monoculture rubber plantations harbour less than half the plant- and animal-species richness of natural forest.
• Capturing the cyclical patterns of forest clearance and planting in such an analysis is also difficult.

Why are forests being lost or gained?

• The Fudan University study found that wildfires were linked to increased forest fragmentation in both the southern Amazon and central Siberia.
• But the reasons for these fires are probably very different and can often be complicated.
• In central Siberia, unusually high temperatures have led to forest fires in recent years.

Large tracts of forests are important

• Forests create their own microclimates, with depths of shade, humidity and specific soils.
• These microclimates are significantly altered at the edges of forests.
• In intact forests, animals can move over large distances without having to leave the habitat they depend upon.

• IO Monitor enables global decision makers to better understand financial, climate, and environmental risk in near real-time at previously unobtainable speed and scale.
• What makes IO Monitor unique is Impact Observatory’s deep learning approach, which automates and accelerates space-based mapping and monitoring to classify Land Use Land Cover (LULC) categories globally.
• With IO Monitor, customers get on-demand access to the most up-to-date global land cover maps based on the most recent satellite imagery available.
• Impact Observatory enables government leaders to monitor the entire world in near real-time without over tasking national assets.

• This is a supplementary report to Financing the Transition: How to make the money flow for a net-zero economy , published in March 2023.
• These are needed to phase down coal generation earlier than is economic, limit deforestation, and pay for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• Many reports have estimated the cost per tonne of CO2 saved from avoiding deforestation but few have attempted to estimate what it would cost to put a total end to deforestation.
• The ETC's new report, Financing the transition: the costs of avoiding deforestation, estimates the order of magnitude of concessional/grant payments required to compensate landowners for not cutting down tropical forests for profit (e.g., to raise cattle or grow commodities).