News from the Italian Parks

(17 Gen 11) UN has declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests and Federparchi is already working to prepare a series of initiatives to celebrate this national heritage, the 28% of which is situated in the parks and protected areas of Italy. Every year, 2,876,451 hectares of wood absorb a total amount of ten million tons of CO2, acting as Italy’s green lung. A heritage that must be protected and that is going to have the opportunity to be known by the whole world in 2011.

The economical activities which are connected with the forests, affect the living conditions of 1 billion and 600 million of people all over the world, but every day about 350 square kilometers of forests are destroyed for different reasons: in order to make them into farmlands, because of an indiscriminate deforestation, a wrong management of the land and the creation of human settlements. Aim of the International Year of Forests is to promote the management, the preservation and the sustainable development of the forests all over the world. The international community has been asked to work together with governments, international organizations and the civil society in order to promote a sustainable management of the forests, both for the present and the future generations.

To celebrate the International Year of Forests the UN promotes all those activities, which encourage the exchange of knowledge about the possible strategies that can lead to a sustainable management of the forests. All the initiatives are going to be launched on the 24th of January during the UN Forum that will take place in New York. Many important international organizations are working for the celebrations in 2011: the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) will show the results of the last researches, will promote the reforestation and will try to make the recent international successes (concerning the reduction of the emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation) even better. Moreover, forests are the biggest depot of carbon in the world, which is the same quantity contained in the atmosphere. Considering these data, it is clear that the quickest and cheapest way to reduce emissions and greenhouse effect is to save the forests. To halve the emissions between 2010 and 2020 would lead to a money saving of 3,700 billion dollars. This is the reason why after the International Year of Biodiversity the UN has decided to go on with these initiatives and declared the period between 2011 and 2020 as the "Decade of Biodiversity".