Join us on a journey into the Greater Mekong region, once the worldâs most densely forested area.
After decades of wars in some of the countries, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam are enjoying unprecedented economic boom. Poverty has been reduced, health systems improved and more services available. But with the economic boom, comes a downside. The Greater Mekong regionâs natural resources, especially its forest ecosystems, have suffered dramatically.
Less than 30% of intact forests remain across the Mekong, a region that was just eight years ago covered by 100 million hectares of forest. In six years alone, from 2010 to 2016, the forest area lost is 24 times the size of Hanoi.
And deforestation is just one of the issues. Forest degradation, changes within forests that negatively affect their structure or function over many decades, is often forgotten but has a slow debilitating impact on the ecosystem.
Forests are being cleared to plant commodities like cashew nuts, rubber, palm oil, sugar cane, and corn. Often, Economic Land Concessions across the region are used as entry points for logging luxurious and lesser-known timber species. Roads, railways, dams and other infrastructure are carving their way through previously inaccessible wilderness.
But while the state of forests sounds hopeless, it is not. There is still a window of opportunity to save these remaining treasures. But we need to act now and we need to be bold. The key to all of this is changing how we view forests. Far too often, we look at forests with too narrow of a focus â we talk about trees as monolithic entities without looking at them as an entire living, breathing ecosystem that provides services essential to our survival.
The forest is a supermarket to the world, providing us with fresh water to drink, food to eat, furniture, housing materials, climate regulation, flood and pollution control â all of which can be harvested and consumed sustainably if we try hard enough.
So what do we need to do to ensure the survival of the Greater Mekongâs remaining forests? To begin, governments, business leaders and the public need to understand and recognize the value of forests to clean water, climate regulation, human health and livelihoods and why itâs crucial to protect them. In addition, businesses should commit to and implement zero deforestation supply chain approaches, meaning their operations result in no net forest loss. At the same time, consumers and manufacturers can demand deforestation-free products that respect and support community-based industries.
For these initiatives to work, we ultimately need to work together. It is not possible for one organization to solve all the issues. WWF and other conservation organizations, international and national, have to collaborate, cooperate and coordinate like never before to ensure that Mekong forests survive the next 10 years and beyond. And at the end of the day, it comes down to people. Brave, forward-thinking individuals in communities across the Greater Mekong who are going to incredible lengths to safeguard forests and protect their families.
