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The Hidden Power of Forests

Join us for the free, online event, “The Hidden Power of Forests” on March 26, 2026. Learn what forests can teach us about community resilience with National Geographic Explorer at Large, Nalini Nadkarni, and Tsimshian scientist Dr. Teresa Ryan.

Lands managed by Afro-descendant peoples in the Amazon experience dramatically lower deforestation and house some of the planet’s richest ecosystems—showing how centuries-old stewardship can guide global conservation.

If the theory of the biotic pump is correct—and the forests play an essential role in the water cycle—this gives urgent importance to saving our old growth forests and restoring those which have been demolished or degraded.

For me, the mountain on which I live, the animals and plants, the climate, the river and underground spring… actually the land and all it encompasses… this is also my community.

The coming years will tell how these communities might find continuity between a fractured past and what could become a hopeful future.

From the London borough of Hackney and Barcelona in Spain, to Freetown in Sierra Leone, increasing the number of trees in cities has been shown to be an important, low-cost, and rapid way to cut pollution, improve health and well-being, and make cities less vulnerable to extreme weather.

As the hyper-local landscape transformations prove themselves over time, though, perhaps the Miyawaki Method will become a centerpiece of Paris’s ostensibly biodiversity-sensitive landscaping strategy.

Unlike the Magna Carta, pertaining to the rights of barons, the Charter of the Forest addressed the rights of common people; it restricted the amount of land that the king could claim for private use and restored common rights to common natural resources.

The truth is that high urban density and abundant housing are entirely compatible with a lush tree canopy.

Cloud forests are born of very specific geographic and climatic features: they usually form partway up mountains, when moisture-laden air currents from surrounding lowlands and bodies of water are forced upward and then cool and condense as they rise, creating persistent fog or cloud cover in a particular area.