Forests are also important in helping regulate global climate and weather patterns, critical environmental systems that support life on Earth. Much of the world's original forests have either been severely degraded or have disappeared completely. We are destroying forests at an unprecedented rate, with an area of forest the size of a football pitch cut down every two seconds. Half of the forests lost in the last 10,000 years have met their end in the last 80 years and most of that destruction took place in the last 30 years (4). This is driving major biodiversity loss on earth as well as destroying the livelihoods of many millions of forest dependent peoples. The current extinction rate of the plant and species is approximately 1,000 times faster than it was in pre-human times (5). Scientists claim that the Earth is in the sixth major extinction event (6) and that extinction rates will further increase ten fold by the year 2050.