Plants of the Gods: S5E3. How to Save the Rainforest with Mongabay's Rhett Butler

But you touch on something which is near and dear to my heart, which is this whole idea as rainforests as a source of carbon and little else.

And you wrote a paper recently, which I think of as conservation besides carbon, that I think needs to have wider readership, even though it's attracted a lot of attention.

So can you talk about the conclusions of that paper about this over-focus on carbon as the answer or the problem?

Yeah, so certainly.

Thank you for bringing this up.

So yeah, I mean, there's been this, it's been kind of interesting the past 20 years, which I'm sure you've observed, where Chris Wanner, Forests have kind of gone tropical forces kind of gone from kind of a backwater niche issue to something that's much more relevant to a lot more people.

Chris Wanner, But a lot of that focus has really been on the carbon of forests and so.

that's almost entirely the emphasis of a lot of the investment.

And as a result of some of the other benefits, co-benefits of forests kind of fallen by the wayside.

So that's their value to the people who live in those forests, the people who are outside the forest in terms of the ecosystem services that are afforded by healthy and productive forest ecosystems.

So water, but also lack of focus on biodiversity.

And so I think that's starting to change now, but certainly from, I'd say like the late 90s, Matt Lease- Mid 2000s to the mid 2010s I mean that was really the emphasis and so bringing those co benefits.

Matt Lease- Not as important for forest conservation, but also sort of increases the recognized value of forest, so if you're just making a decision about whether to save a forest based on carbon.

that's only a small part of the overall value that a forest is providing for humanity and other species.

So that's kind of the gist of the paper, but I guess like two of the major macro trends that have occurred over the past 20 years is sort of this focus on forests for nature-based solutions.

But then the second component of that is we now, because of satellite monitoring and other forms of remote sensing, We know what's happening in forest better than ever before.

So we no longer have ignorance as an excuse for not taking action.

So we can see what's happening.

And so what that has done is it's made forest conservation relevant to a lot more people and sort of broadened the constituency for forest conservation.

But we have to continue moving beyond just carbon in order for that to continue.

And I think that's the value of that is that it just makes forest even more relevant to more people.

Yeah, I completely agree with that.

And I compare this type of approach to conservation to flying over Monument Valley in a little plane and everybody runs to one side.

I see so much of conservation being wrongheaded because it's so reductionist.

It's all about carbon.