World Environment Day is just around the corner – an annual event held every June 5th – that was started in 1972 by the United Nations Environment Programme as a way to bring global awareness to issues surrounding the environment. This year’s theme, in tangent with the UN’s International Year of Forests is meant to highlight the world’s forests as an invaluable resource that is crucial to our existence. Not only are forests responsible for creating livelihoods for 1.6 billion people around the world, they also store carbon dioxide as a “global sink” and release oxygen into the atmosphere. Forests are the lungs of our planet and help to combat the ever-present issue of climate change – we all depend on them, even if they are half way around the world. Despite their significance, forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. It is estimated that every year, 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed. Emitting more carbon dioxide than the world’s cars, trucks and planes combined, tropical deforestation is responsible for nearly 20 percent of global carbon emissions. Forests are home to two-thirds of the world’s terrestrial species but are losing their biodiversity quite rapidly with an estimated 100 plant and animal species disappearing each day. For twenty years, ARC and its field partner, the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), have been conserving and restoring Tanzania’s Eastern Arc and coastal forests. Conservation International recently named both the coastal forests of East Africa and the Eastern Afromontane (the geographic feature that is home to the Eastern Arc mountains) to its list of “ten most threatened forest hotspots” (#8 and #10 respectively). Forests on this list have lost 90 percent or more of their original habitat and each is home to at least 1,500 plant species found nowhere else in the world. Through grassroots collaboration with local communities, ARC and TFCG have already planted 10 million trees in the Eastern Arc and coastal forests. We also recently pledged with the Earth Day Network’s Billion Acts of Green campaign to plant 1 million MORE trees in the next two years! On June 5th all around the world, people in support of the world’s forests will be making their own pledge for World Environment Day – and we are very excited to tell you about ours! ARC’s Junior Board will host a summer cocktail party on July 27th at Greenhouse – NYC’s first eco-friendly nightclub. Proceeds will support grassroots community projects to conserve and restore Tanzania’s rainforests. Check your inbox next week for a save-the-date with more details. Not on our mailing list? Sign up here. What will your pledge be? Learn more about World Environment Day and to register your activity along with ours. Sources: Conservation International UNEP Forest Biodiversity UNEP World Environment Day