World Rainforest Day 2021: How Expo 2020 Dubai honours rainforests

Dubai: Carbon sinks, home to more than half of the globe's terrestrial species, medicinal repositories and freshwater wellsprings – despite their invaluable role in sustaining life across the planet, the world’s rainforests are depleting at an alarming rate of 85 acres per minute. On June 22, as we welcome World Rainforest Day, let’s take a look at what the global participants of the biggest event in the Arab region are doing to conserve and raise awareness about the lungs of the earth.

Two rainforest-themed pavilions and four projects under the Global Best Practice Programme at Expo 2020 Dubai are committed to underscoring the immeasurable yet often conveniently invisible loss of rainforests to the world.

Malaysia Pavilion, a rainforest canopy

Under the theme of ‘Energising Sustainability’, the Malaysia Pavilion reflects the country’s protected tropical rainforests in its design and function, specifically the 248-million-year-old Endau-Rompin National Park and the 130-million-year-old Taman Negara tri-state national park.

Award-winning firm Hijjas Architects + Planners will provide visitors an immersive experience of being under a rainforest canopy that spans 1,234 square metres.

The net-zero carbon pavilion’s facade is built with meranti timber, a sustainable forest resource native to Southeast Asia certified by the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) for sustainable forest management (SFM) practices.

Singapore Pavilion, a city in nature

Singapore is another net-zero energy pavilion that mimics the city-state’s tropical urban landscape. WOHA architects have seamlessly integrated nature into architecture, echoing Singapore’s vision of becoming ‘a city in nature’.

Visitors will walk under hanging gardens and through three nine-metre-tall thematic cones of lush greenery that provide an insight into sustainable urban living.

Best practice projects for rainforest conservation

In 2018, Expo 2020 launched its Global Best Practice Programme (GBPP) to offer innovators from every corner of the world a platform to showcase their tangible solutions to some of our biggest challenges.

Rainforest conservation is part of the ‘Resilient Habitat’ umbrella, one of five areas the programme focuses on in line with a number of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Take a look at how the following submitted projects are working to protect rainforests around the world:

Conservation cooperatives for long-lasting change by Planet Indonesia, Indonesia

The West Kalimantan-based non-profit organisation conserves at-risk ecosystems through community-led partnerships.

The rich rainforests and mangroves of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, are home to endangered species such as orangutans and sun bears, and diverse marine life, and environmental degradation is threatening their existence while adversely impacting the livelihoods of communities in rural coastal villages.

Planet Indonesia’s Conservation Cooperatives (CCs) offer basic healthcare, educational development and microfinance training in exchange for communities’ active participation in sustainable conservation practices, reducing natural resource exploitation and protecting biodiversity.

Through the CCs approach, the organisation has engaged more than 3,000 households and planted 150,000-plus trees.

The Yaeda Valley Project by Carbon Tanzania, Tanzania

Carbon Tanzania is a social enterprise with an innovative business approach to landscape conservation in East Africa.

The Yaeda Valley forest in Tanzania – home to the Hadza, one of Africa’s last hunter-gatherer communities, for 40,000 years – is under threat of deforestation from outsiders looking for new grazing pastures and croplands.

Carbon Tanzania’s project enables indigenous communities to secure ownership of their ancestral land and offers them an income through the sale of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) carbon offsets, allowing communities to sustainably manage their forests and resources.

The Yaeda Valley Project protects 350 square kilometres of forest and has so far prevented the felling of 18,700 trees per year, reducing deforestation in the area by 9 per cent in the past five years.

Carbon Funding for widespread adoption of improved cookstoves by Instituto Perene, Brazil

Instituto Perene is a non-profit organisation promoting development, while protecting natural resources in rural Brazil.

Approximately 30 million people in Brazil depend on firewood for domestic cooking over smoky, open-air fires, causing household air pollution, forest degradation and climate change.

With the help of local builders and cooks, Instituto Perene developed efficient, durable cooking stoves, generating carbon credits to finance project activity. The solution has helped protect and restore nature, reduced local air pollution and resulted in safer kitchens as well as improved self-esteem and reduced respiratory discomfort among rural women.

Perene’s efficient stoves have improved the lives of 8,000 households across 500 remote communities in the Brazilian state of Bahia.

First Cacao Agroforestry Concession within a protected area by Ya'axché Conservation Trust, Belize

A non-governmental organisation, the Ya'axché Conservation Trust works alongside local communities to empower them through training and education to maintain the 770,000-acre Maya Golden Landscape (MGL) of southern Belize.

Much of the fertile lands of Belize in the Caribbean are at risk of degradation from large-scale agriculture and ‘slash-and-burn’ practices that reduce the amount of land available for subsistence agriculture in indigenous communities and force many to encroach on protected areas.

The Ya’axché Conservation Trust’s climate-smart integrated farming model supports Inga alley cropping (planting between rows of Inga trees), cacao agroforestry (a sustainable alternative to monoculture that grows cacao using the shade of the forest canopy cover), and organic apiculture (beekeeping), while working with communities to sustainably manage the concession and protected areas.

The trust has converted 250 acres of disturbed forest to agroforestry, where trees are grown around pastureland, trained 18 beekeepers and continuously assists 80 farmers with technical support.

Under the theme ‘Small Steps, Big Leaps: Simple Solutions for Sustainable Impact’, Expo 2020’s GBPP will dedicate an exhibition to spotlight select projects so that they can be adapted, replicated or scaled globally.

- The writer is an intern with Gulf News.