Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin launched the 100 Million Tree-Planting Campaign as part of the Greening Malaysia Programme and the national agenda to address climate change and improve quality of life. – Bernama pic
SINCE 1990, the Earth has lost 420 million hectares of forests to land conversion for agriculture, urbanisation, mining and industry.
Forested areas equal to the combined land territories of India and Egypt were lost in the span of a single generation.
It happens gradually, such devastation seldom if ever registers on the public radar in the moment, we only see the enormity of the loss with decades of perspective. Fortunately, global deforestation is slowing down,from 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s to 10 million hectares per year (2015 to 2020).
Still, losing 10 million hectares every year in a heating world is a massive loss for the biosphere, climate stability, and, ultimately, humanity. Recently, the United Nations Development Programme with Oxford University collaborators released a global opinion survey on climate change, “The People’s Climate Vote”, (drawing 1.2 million respondents, fully detailed at http://bit.ly/2MuTVh7 ).
