RAINFOREST PROTECTION

Forest protection is climate protection!

Tropica Verde supports specific nature and species conservation projects in Costa Rica with donations and membership fees. The protected and reforested forests provide a habitat for endangered animals and plants and secure the drinking water supply for an entire region.

The conservation of this diverse and irreplaceable natural wealth is one of the most pressing environmental problems of our time. We all have to do something about the ongoing destruction.

When we protect the rainforest, we also protect its function as a CO₂ reservoir. The plants in the rainforest absorb CO₂ and produce sugar through photosynthesis to cover their energy requirements. The carbon is stored in the plant material and thus removed from the atmosphere. If the forests are cleared and burned, this CO₂ is released again. This increases the greenhouse effect and temperatures on earth rise. [3]

It is therefore extremely important to protect existing forests in order to preserve them as CO₂ reservoirs! The reforestation of former forest areas also binds CO₂ from the atmosphere.

A hectare of 60-year-old tropical rainforest binds around 590 tons of CO₂ over the course of its lifetime and around 10 tons of CO₂ every year thereafter [4]. Old, mature trees bind much more CO₂ per year than young trees. Tropica Verde supports both: on the one hand, we protect original primary forests, some of which have trees over 100 years old, such as the giant kapok trees. On the other hand, we plant young trees in mixed cultivation where necessary. For us, targeted means that we only reforest with locally occurring tree species in special buffer zones or forest-connecting biocorridors, which also expand the habitat of the animals. In this way, our protected areas help to stabilize the climate.