Roberta's Forest Blog — Let's Get Planting

You are probably wondering what this title is all about. Today is Friday, the 23rd of October, 2009 and I made a pledge to write this blog and “get the word out” about these numbers. Tomorrow is another BIG day for us, the PEOPLE, to take climate action and in one way or another call attention to the fact that we are now living in a world that is close to uninhabitable.

350 is the number of parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere that is the safe limit for humanity. Right now we are at 387ppm, unsafe for humans, and I would imagine, any other life on the planet. Go to www.350.org and see for yourself. It is up to us to change this and change it quickly.

We now live in a worldwide community. There can be no more illusion of separateness when it comes to our common welfare, the environment in which we live. Our Earth. In the very near future the people of the world will come together in our common concern. Value will be given to the quality of our environment rather than stuff and money.

We at the LRFF have been involved in many different projects in the past few years, trying to get native tropical forests restored or preserving the forests that are left. It is amazing when the business world or governments get involved in the larger projects. Of course, governments always move as slow as possible. There are just too many departments and officials that need to sign off on every step.
Right now in the world there is a huge movement to include existing primary forests in the carbon markets, but no one can seem to figure out how to design the framework. Some environmental groups are against it, saying that if forests are supported in one place then forests will be destroyed in another. Here in Costa Rica, according to the way the framework reads now, the landowners are “penalized” from receiving payments for environmental services in this scheme because Costa Rica has too good of a conservation reputation and too much forest. They only want to support countries that are experiencing high deforestation and forest degradation, they are in other words, rewarded. HMMMM.

The carbon markets sell forest carbon, from reforested or existing forests, but it is a business and the work is carried on in this manner. Profit over TRUTH. For example, a reforestation project in which the project leaders are planting a monoculture of say, Eucalyptus, because it grows super fast and absorbs more carbon than a native tropical forest, will receive more income to pay the landowners than will a project restoring natural tropical forest with a large variety of species. When will we be able to see the difference between what is LOGICAL (profit and frameworks) or what is TRUTH (that we must do this work of healing our Earth out of LOVE, not what we have been conditioned to believe is scientifically logical).

Katydid at La Reserva

The scientists, business people and bureaucrats who are running this show are moving way to slowly to get that ppm down to 350 any time soon. While they have meetings, conferences, talk and talk, argue and argue, the ppm continues to rise and we continue to wait for them to decide how to save it all. The goals they mention are not until the years 2020, 2030 or 2050. The new climate agreement that is being decided in Copenhagen this December won’t even go into affect until 2012. We need a drastic change RIGHT NOW. All life on Earth is watching us. Will we be the heroes or the villains of the future? Will WE THE PEOPLE get it done? It is up to us!

Please do what you can every day to wake the people around you up. Go to the website mentioned above and make a pledge to take some action as they suggest. Even in Costa Rica, with it’s wonderful reputation of being “ultra green” the destruction continues to march on. Without comment see the following photos of what humans call development. This is at the beautiful, pristine, “bottomless” Lake Cote, just north over the hill from Lake Arenal. Will we ever understand the importance of doing development that takes ALL LIFE into consideration, not just humans? We haven’t done a very good job so far! Again, it is up to all of us to let people know the importance of this consideration.

Might as well be on the moon, eh.

Now, for the good news. The LRFF’s participation in the Global Giving Open Challenge this past August and September won us a permanent place on their organization’s website. Thanks to all of you, we collected $7600 with 114 donors. Please go to our project page and see the Project Progress Report that I posted, www.globalgiving.com/3558/ We still need $2400 to complete the budget for this project, but are already moving ahead with it. We went with David Alvarez this week to make sure where he wants us to construct the fences and next week the topographer will come to measure and register the future corridor site. At the bottom of our project page you will find a little “widget” with a photo of the Bachelor Monkey. You can send this to your contacts or post it on your Facebook or other networking page. People can just click on this widget and it will take them to our project. Look for more of our projects that we will be posting in the near future. Please help us to finish funding this project.

Euphonia at La Reserva, waiting

Thanks to all of you, my friends and co-conspirators, for letting me blow off steam in this blog. Sometimes it is necessary, I guess they call it “venting”.

Come on everybody, let’s all get together and help our Earth, NOW. Do it in whatever way you can. Support the LRFF’s reforestation projects or start your own initiative to get the people awake and moving on this. The future for saving and restoring the world’s native tropical forests is people in the developed countries supporting the developing countries projects for this most important work. All of our lives depend upon it.

Like the little Euphonia above, full of love (the one and only love, a love they don’t even think about) all of the Earth’s life is watching and waiting for us to……………….

GET PLANTING!!!!!