Carbon Sinks, Forests and Climate Change

Eighty percent of the forests that originally covered the earth have been cleared, fragmented, or otherwise degraded.
— Forest Frontier Regions, World Resources Institute
Over the past 150 years, deforestation has contributed an estimated 30 percent of the atmospheric build-up of CO2. It is also a significant driving force behind the loss of genes, species, and critical ecosystem services. However, in the international policy arena, biodiversity loss and climate change have often moved in wholly unconnected domains.
— Climate, Biodiversity, and Forests, World Resources Institute, 1998
The world's forests and oceans are natural regulators of carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere -- which is a greenhouse gas. While forests are regarded as sinks, meaning they absord carbon dioxide, it is hard to rely on forests to soak up increasing pollution, while forests are increasingly being cut down!