SKOOT celebrating International Day of Forests 21st March
What is International Day of Forests?
The United Nations General assembly announced March 21st as International Day of Forests for the first time in 2012. It is a day created to raise awareness for the importance of forests.
But why is this day so important?
Every year, more than 15 billion trees are cut down. That’s equivalent to a tree being cut down every 30 seconds, so that's one gone from the time you started reading, and likely another 10 by the time you've finished this blog.
That means huge deforestation across the planet. Forests are home to 50% of all animal species and they play a vital role in tackling climate change. The theme this year is 'forests and sustainable production and consumption' and SKOOT has an easy way to help with sustainability and reforestation.
The Significance of Forests
Forests sustainable management and their use of resources are crucial in combating climate change. Trees capture and store carbon emissions that are fuelling global warming and they are essential in helping preserve our planet for the current and future generations. As well as mitigating the effects of climate change, forests also reduce soil erosion and desertification and support biodiversity.
However, forests also play a crucial role in poverty alleviation because the wood from forests help provide an income for millions. Cutting down trees provides a livelihood for local communities and people living in poverty. Wood also enables millions of people to have clean and safe drinking water by boiling water and allows them to cook food and to build shelter.
So cutting down trees is a necessity but as they play such a vital role in climate change it is important that it is done sustainably (ie) we cut down less than we plant.
Sustainability and reforestation with SKOOT
SKOOT can help you play your role in saving the planet and the forests during this year's International Forest Day.
We've partnered with the trusted Eden Reforestation program, we have chosen Eden because to use their mission statement "plant trees and save lives".
We work with Eden in Kenya, just outside of Mombasa (a place where Strings, one of our co-founders, spent many summer holidays when he was younger) to plant our trees, helping to relieve the extreme poverty within local communities.
The designated SKOOT site is called Tudor Creek and this is where all the trees from businesses, communities and individuals using the SKOOT Climate Platform are planted.
At SKOOT we plant what we think is possibly one of the worlds super-trees, Mangroves.
It's superpower is storing carbon. It can store up to 10 times more carbon per hectare than other terrestrial forests and is 5 times better at removing carbon than North Hemisphere trees. Whilst also being brilliant at maintaining or re-establishing marine biodiversity.
Every mangrove in its 1st year it will remove 5.9kg of carbon, and in its life over as much as 750kg.
They also can grow to 30m+ and therefore become an amazing source of building materials such as poles in many counties.
Here's an amazing video from Eden that showcases some of the work Eden is doing in Northern Mombasa on reforestation.
We've planted over 290,000 Mangroves to date, which we're incredibly proud of, but we're only just beginning our journey.
With SKOOT it's easy to take climate action, today. Just choose the solutions that work best for you and start building a cleaner, greener world, in the race to net-zero. Use our carbon calculator to help you identify your carbon footprint and then the solutions we've built to avoid, reduce and remove.
Join our journey to net zero to celebrate International Forests Day at SKOOT.
Or simply checkout our SKOOT shop and buy and plant your own mangrove trees in our SKOOT Forest, plant 10 trees for £1.50 or 100 trees for £15.
