Source: IBTimes
Canadian forest campaigner Eduardo Sousa marks the 10th anniversary of a historic achievement to protect rainfoersts:
The United Nations declared 2011 the International Year of Forests. This is a time to celebrate the planet's forests, but it's also an opportunity to shed a much needed spotlight on the significant deforestation that continues around the world.
Our campaigns in Indonesia, the Amazon and the Congo are running full tilt to try and slow down the pace and stop deforestation. Not only for the sake of all species that rely on these precious forests but also for the sake of a warming planet which needs standing old-growth forests to retain as much carbon as possible.
So it seems fitting this year also marks the 10th anniversary for a landmark announcement to end the rampant deforestation on Canada's west coast.
It took a heated all-out campaign to preserve the Great Bear Rainforest, the largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world. Blockades of logging roads and camps, protests at Canadian embassies around the world and a very effective international markets campaign created an international buzz around the Great Bear Rainforest.
The Great Bear Rainforest Framework Agreement announced on 4 April 2001 laid the groundwork for a solutions-based approach to complex environmental and socio-economic issues over conflicting land uses.
Solutions to the complex problem of global deforestation are vitally needed, and the preservation of the Great Bear Rainforest might be one such solution. The Great Bear Rainforest offers a global model that could help resolve not only environmental conflicts, but also address issues of social justice, especially in terms of the rights of indigenous people to their traditional territories, and their right to a sustainable livelihood.
Reflecting back, it's clear that long-lasting solutions like the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, especially in complex land-use and resource conflicts, require long-lasting commitment from all parties. These take significant time to succeed. Indeed our campaign has been running for over 15 years.
The Great Bear Rainforest is on the way to a happy ending, but the last chapter remains unwritten. All parties are working towards two goals to ensure the long-term ecological integrity of the Great Bear Rainforest (70 per cent protection of natural old growth forests across the region) and significant improvements in the well-being of communities that rely on the rainforest by 2014. Success in the Great Bear Rainforest demands that both goals are achieved.
The campaigns to protect Clayoquout Sound and the Great Bear Rainforest have gone on to inspire Greenpeace's work in the Amazon, the Congo and Indonesia. In marking the 10th anniversary of the Great Bear Rainforest Framework Agreement we hope that this successful model develops into a true 'greenprint' for global forest conservation.