Massive corporate greed is driving the destruction of rainforests.
Why are rainforests being destroyed? Massive corporate greed is driving the destruction of rainforests for cheap agricultural and forestry products like palm oil, soy, beef, pulp and paper, timber, and cocoa — to make the products that line our local store shelves and to line the pockets of Wall Street bankers.
Tropical rainforests teeming with life are burned, bulldozed, and cleared to make room for monoculture crops. The products that are made with these crops — products from brands we all recognize — have a short shelf life. But the damage to rainforests is long-lasting and far-reaching.
Rainforests provide the air we breathe, the water we drink, and they keep carbon out of the atmosphere. They’re home to half of the world’s biodiversity, found nowhere else on earth. They’re also home to Indigenous Peoples who have managed and protected these forests for thousands of years.
When corporations choose short-term profits over keeping forests standing, they’re stealing from us all, and they are literally making the world a more dangerous place. It’s not just endangered species who need the rainforests to survive: we all do.
You are the solution to Keep Forests Standing.
How can we stop deforestation? This is where you come in: by pressuring corporations to uphold Indigenous and human rights and to keep forests standing. Every massive brand and bank we move from policy to action influences the entire industry and sector, sending a positive ripple through every link along the supply chain. Our role is to bring an incredible amount of public pressure — people power — to bear on corporations to stop deforestation and end human rights abuses.
At the same time, we work to uplift and uphold the rights of the local and Indigenous communities who call these rainforests home. These Forest Defenders have proven to be the best, most-capable people for the job of keeping forests standing. The more we can support them, the more we support the rainforests they defend, and protect our climate and our future.
We must keep forests intact and standing. We must uphold the rights of frontline and Indigenous communities as they face the most immediate harm. We must draw a line in the sand: not another forest cleared, not another community’s lands stolen.
