Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Friday, October 5, 2007
What do you do if you hold the world record for being the deforestation champion? You host the U.N. Climate Change summit!
Before your guests arrive, from 189 countries, you spruce things up by planting 79 million trees in a single day.
That’s what is happening in Indonesia, where they destroyed an area of forest the size of 300 soccer fields PER HOUR between 2000 and 2005, this according to Greenpeace.
It would be nice attain a world record for planting the most trees in one day. I’m kind of feeling like 79 million seedlings still wouldn’t equal 300 soccer fields per hour for 5 years, but it’s a nice start.
Indonesia is one of the worlds top 3 greenhouse gas emitters due to deforestation, along with the U.S. and China.
China recently became #1 ahead of the U.S.
The tree planting event is scheduled to take place in November with the summit being held in December.
Australia will contribute $22 million to preserve 173,000 acres of peat forest in Indonesia’s kalimantan region and re-flood nearly 500,000 acres of dried up peat swamps. The dried up peat swamps were left as a result of a failed plan to use that land to grow rice. Indonesia wanted to provide all of it’s own rice needs. 10 years later the fields of peat lie brittle and dry catching fire frequently.
When the peat lands burn it sends billows of smoke on the wind to neighbors in the region. Not exactly a good neighbor policy.
The plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 700 million tonnes over the next 30 years.
Photo Thanks: IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency
Labels: Australia, IAEA, Indonesia, U.N. Climate Change Summit, deforestation, greenhouse gas
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
79 Million Trees to be Planted in 1 Day!
