GLOBAL CANOPY
- JOHN KREBS FIELD STATION, WYTHAM
OX2 8QJ OXFORD, OXFORDSHIRE
Phone: +44 (0) 1865 724333
Fax: +44 (0) 1865 724555
E-mail: Send messagewww.globalcanopy.org
Short profile:
The Global Canopy Programme is an alliance of scientific institutions around the world, applying the tropical forest intelligence of our networks to protect forests and the vital ecosystem services they provide to humanity. We are a think-tank and catalyst, actively testing innovative ways to protect tropical forests in a globalised economy that still values them more dead than alive. We believe that only multidisciplinary approaches can meet the complex challenges facing forests, and for the last 5 years we have successfully built up policy and business programmes to complement our science heritage. Resulting initiatives such as the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project, the Forests Now Declaration, and the Little Book series aim to target key pressure points threatening tropical forests, and have been widely recognized for their impact.
Detailed description:
It all started in Oxford, with 29 international experts in tropical forests locked inside a room thinking: how to investigate ‘nature’s last biotic frontier’ and most urgently, how to help stop its destruction. They concluded that by working together, canopy researchers would be able to leverage more funding for a major collaborative natural science project to investigate tropical forests. Its results should be communicated far and wide to those with the power to halt deforestation. The Global Canopy Programme would be the catalyst of action.
Ten years later, the GCP has developed and supported projects in all tropical corners of the Earth; has chased ambitious canopy dreams such as ‘ Whole Forests Observatories’ and has translated the value of forests services and life to policy-makers and investors in developed and developing countries. Its success can be measured by its increasing network of partners and friends, the loyalty and generosity of its donors, and the popularity of its products. With help from the UK’s Darwin Initiative and the FCO Global Opportunities Fund, the GCP has also developed canopy training programmes in Brazil, Malaysia and Britain, helping to build a platform for new scientific leadership in forest science.
Tropical forests contain over half of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and act like a giant ‘eco- utility’ providing vital ecosystem services that underpin climate, water, food and energy security as well as human health and livelihoods from local to global scales. Currently, these services are unrecognised and unrewarded in international policy and financial frameworks, causing tropical forests to be worth more dead than alive. We need to develop and implement policy and financial mechanisms that recognise and reward the value of the ecosystem services that forests provide.
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