Prince's Rainforests Project (PRP)

Background

Tropical rainforests absorb nearly a fifth of all man-made CO2 emissions around the world, which helps greatly to minimise the effects of climate change. However, these same rainforests are currently being destroyed at the rate of an area the size of a football pitch every four seconds.

To make matters worse, when the rainforests are burnt down - to clear land for commercial farming or mining, for example - they release all the CO2 that they have stored back into the atmosphere. The alarming scale of this rapid burning of the rainforests around the world means that CO2 emissions from tropical deforestation are actually higher than from the entire global transport sector.

Introduction to The Prince's Rainforests Project

The Prince's Rainforests Project (PRP) was set up in 2007 by HRH The Prince of Wales following reports from leading climate change experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to promote awareness of the urgent need to take action against tropical deforestation. The Prince of Wales has long been concerned about climate change and about how destruction of the world's rainforests contributes to rising temperatures and sea levels.

The PRP are working with governments, businesses and non-profit organisations around the world to find solutions to deforestation - and to find them fast - with the ambition of ‘making the trees worth more alive than dead'.

"If deforestation can be stopped in its tracks, then we will be able to buy ourselves some much-needed time to build the low carbon economies on which our futures depend. I have endeavoured to create a global public, private and NGO partnership to discover an innovative means of halting tropical deforestation. Success would literally transform the situation for our children and grandchildren and for every species on the planet." - HRH The Prince of Wales

Objectives

The PRP's work is focused on two very specific aims. The first is to raise awareness of the damaging effects of deforestation for everyone. The second is to identify appropriate incentives that will encourage rainforest nations to stop burning down vast areas of valuable forests.

Raising awareness
Destruction of the rainforests has very real and very serious consequences for us all - today and tomorrow. The PRP has launched a global awareness campaign to improve understanding of the link between rainforests and climate change and the need for urgent action to stop deforestation.

So do your bit and sign up to show your support today! It only takes a moment to help us to spread the message around the world...

Identifying incentives to stop deforestation
Since the Project was set up, the PRP have worked hard to understand the economic reasons for deforestation in rainforest nations. They wanted to find a fair and effective way to encourage rainforest nations to protect, rather than destroy, their forests - and to identify ways to fund that approach.

In particular, they have identified the need for an Emergency Package of funding for rainforest nations to help protect their rainforests and motivate them to move away from deforestation in favour of more environmentally friendly economic development activity.

On 1st April 2009, The Prince of Wales hosted an historic meeting of world leaders on forests and climate change, at which it was agreed an international Working Group would be formed to examine this Emergency Package proposal.

You can read more about the Prince's Rainforest Project's current and past work in What they do