Why are trees so important?

Forests are vital for us, we cannot sustain life without healthy and thriving forests.

Forests provide us with clean air and water, but also with vital medicine. According to the US National Cancer Institute, 70% of all plants identified as having anti-cancer characteristics are found in our tropical rainforests. About 25% of drugs used in conventional medicines are derived from rainforest plants.

Forest also plays a direct role for 300 million people in their day-to-day lives by offering food, shelter and employment. If we fail to protect our forests we will essentially threaten our own homes and livelihoods.

Forests help safeguard biodiversity by being home to more than 50% of all plant and animal species. But all plant and animal species today face a real threat of extinction, which goes hand in hand with increasing deforestation. Extinction rates have increased by up to a thousand times in the last few hundred years - a rate which will increase further if we do not protect our forests.

Forests absorb nearly 30% of our CO2 emissions and effectively acts as a buffer against global warming. But our forests do not only absorb carbon, they also store nearly 300 billion tonnes of carbon. It's estimated that deforestation is responsible for 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Tree-planting Program

As we all know planting trees can help fight climate change and poverty, among many other things. And now you can help us plant trees, simply by visiting and using Green Blog! It's simple: we will plant one tree for every thousand forum posts, blog entries and members we reach on Green Blog.

New tree-planting progress

In celebration of International Forest Day 2014 we have re-launched our popular tree-planting program. Green Blog will plant trees with the help from Vi Agroforestry, which is a Swedish development cooperation organization that works with support to farmers in the Lake Victoria Basin in Eastern Africa.

• Tree ##Location
• Tree 10Will be planted when we reach 7000 forum posts
• Tree 11Will be planted when we reach 2000 members
• Tree 12Will be planted when we reach 1000 blog entries

Old tree-planting progress

This is our old tree-planting program from 2008. These trees were planted with the help from Tree-Nation and WWF.

• Tree ##Location
• Tree 01Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan
• Tree 02Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan
• Tree 03(-2.58114 latitude, 114.029665 longitude)
• Tree 04(-2.5810925 latitude, 114.029665 longitude)
• Tree 05(-2.5813775 latitude, 114.0284775 longitude)
• Tree 06(-2.58133 latitude, 114.0284775 longitude)
• Tree 07Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan
• Tree 08Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan
• Tree 09Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan