Last month Greenpeace International said that since the start of this year, fires in Siberia have destroyed nearly 21 million hectares of virgin forest. But it is not only Siberia that is going up in flames. With other major fires reported in Greenland, Alaska and northern Canada, the entire Arctic region has been burning at record levels, exacerbating the problems caused by global warming and climate change. Extensive fires have also been reported in the Amazon basin, Europe and Asia. The full scale of the damage caused by forest fires this year obviously will not be known for another five months but we do know that in 2019 the amount of global virgin forest lost was about 2.8 percent higher than the previous year, and the annual loss rate has remained high for the past two decades, despite efforts to curb deforestation. The Earth is already paying a heavy price for the loss of forests, especially primary forests, which are many thousands of years old. For one thing, burning trees release a lot of carbon into air and these emissions have been rising sharply for several years. In 2019, 7.8 billion tons of carbon was emitted. This was 26 percent more than in 2018 and represented about 21 percent of the year’s total carbon emissions. In addition to releasing significant amounts of carbon while actively burning, forest fires have a longer-term negative effect. The soot from burning wood that ends up in the air absorbs sunlight and warms the globe more. And when the soot settles on ice or snow, or falls on it in raindrops, it becomes trapped, reducing the reflectivity of the ice and snow. As a result, more heat is trapped and the ice melts faster. Not only do burning forests create a lot of carbon and lead to increased melting of ice, they also affect global carbon emissions in another, very significant way. Forests are immense carbon sinks that capture the element from the atmosphere and store it. Approximately 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is one-third of the annual amount released by burning fossil fuels, is absorbed by forests every year. The world’s forests currently store 300 billion tons of carbon, which is 30 times the global annual emissions from fossil fuels. Scientists say that if 2 billion hectares of degraded land around the world was restored and diverse forests replanted, they could fully neutralize global carbon emissions from fossil fuels. As well as delaying or even preventing global warming, forests also promote ecology in another significant way. Most of the world’s oldest forests are among the richest repositories of biodiversity, both flora and fauna. They provide canopies that benefit birds, cavities that provide nesting places for animals, and dead trees that become homes for insects, reptiles and amphibians, while the moisture they create feeds lichen and mosses that also are habitats for insects. Each of these living creatures plays a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance. When millions of square kilometers of ancient forests go up in flames each year, it causes irreplaceable damage to global biodiversity that is already under severe pressure. Forests are not only home to animals, insects and plants, they are also the habitat for hundreds of millions of human beings, the vast majority of whom are extremely poor and live on the edge of societies. The livelihoods of about 1.6 billion people, 23 percent of the world’s population, depend on forests, mainly old forests, as these people are foragers who gather fruits and other forest produce. More than 80 percent of virgin forests in the world have already been lost to industrial logging, and the remaining 20 percent is under unprecedented pressure as a result of global warming, fires and ever-increasing logging activity that seems to continue with little oversight, even in this age of greater awareness about the need to preserve the environment and ecological balance. Despite the alarm bells that are ringing all around the world, governments and businesses seem to be continuing on the path to destruction with blinkers on. Industrial logging is thriving and has now reached areas that were once no-go areas, including areas deep in Africa, the Arctic Circle, the Himalayas and parts of central India that are home to forests that are millions of years old. Both governments and businesses try to hide behind schemes such as compensatory afforestation, which is the process of introducing trees to areas not previously forested, plantations or more recent fads such as urban forests, as if they are adequate solutions to the global problem of increasingly few trees. When millions of square kilometers of ancient forests go up in flames each year, it causes irreplaceable damage to global biodiversity that is already under severe pressure. Ranvir S. Nayar While these measures might help to restore some degraded lands or replace a few trees, they are in no way effective replacements for virgin forests. It is time that leaders around the world understood and recognized that the first and most significant measure that must be taken to prevent a global environmental catastrophe is to protect the biodiversity hot spots provided by older forests. Last year, the UN warned that more than a million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, 75 percent of agricultural genetic biodiversity has been lost, as has 70 percent of fishery diversity, and that the unprecedented forest fires that have only been getting worse over the past two decades threaten to push many of these threatened species to the very edge of extinction. The only possible way to prevent, or at least delay, this catastrophe is for governments to take a more serious and urgent view of the situation, and for businesses to consider the potential long-term profits that would come from preventing the meltdown of planet Earth. So far, the signs of either of these things happening have been anything but hopeful. Ranvir S. Nayar is the editor of Media India Group, a global platform based in Europe and India that encompasses publishing, communication and consultation services. 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