Personal is global: Fostering our deep connection to rainforests

On World Rainforest Day 2026, we celebrate the deep connection between people and forests, recognizing that our future depends on healthy, thriving forests. © ITTO

In the world’s dense rainforests and its environs, communities that rely heavily on the services provided by nature have worked consistently to protect and conserve the integrity of the environment, recognizing that the only solution is one that is forged with the principles of ecological protection and sustainable development.

While there is still much to be done to reverse the effects of deforestation, current trends offer opportunities for optimism. The degradation of rainforests, for instance, decelerated by 36% in 2025 compared to 2024.

This is only possible, of course, with the collaborative efforts of a constellation of actors who continue to advocate for various technologies, innovations, and initiatives, including sustainable forest management, payments for ecosystem services, protected area management, and ecotourism promotion.

The forest within us

In 2026, we celebrate World Rainforest Day by highlighting how forests are inseparable from our daily lives. From cradle to grave, forests reside with us – from our very first breath to the resources that sustain us and ensure a high quality of life until our bodies go back to the earth as dust.

With the theme “The Forest Within You,” this global celebration, organized by the Rainforest Partnership since 2017, is a timely reminder that forests are not just a reality separate and distant from our own. We will always rely on forests and our existence is predicated on the survival of forests.

Forests provide a continuous flow of ecosystem services that sustain not only forest-dependent communities, including Indigenous groups, but also lowland and city communities. These benefits can be direct, such as food and water sourced from forested areas, as well as raw materials like timber, fuelwood, and medicinal plants. Forests also provide a suite of indirect benefits, including climate regulation, habitat for wildlife, and recreational opportunities.                                                                                    

On World Rainforest Day 2026, the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) hails its partnerships with different stakeholders and institutions to highlight the importance of forests, especially rainforests, in sustaining mankind and confronting the perils of our time, including climate change.

Forest conservation: An internalized commitment

Until the mid-1990s, Costa Rica experienced increasing deforestation due to population growth and the expanding reach of logging and agriculture. This puts significant pressure on a biodiverse tropical nation that hosts up to 6% of the world’s biodiversity in an area smaller than West Virginia.

Their efforts eventually paid off. Costa Rica, now globally recognized as a leader in forest conservation, successfully halted and reversed the ravages of deforestation, managing to turn its forests into a net sink of greenhouse gases. 

Costa Rica’s success in conserving its forests is due in no small part to the engagement of local communities and various stakeholders. These actors have fostered an intimate relationship with their environment. Their commitment to conservation efforts, therefore, goes beyond perfunctory execution – it is, more than anything else, internalized.

Recognizing this, an ITTO-support project mobilized the government, the private sector, civil society organizations, and local communities to secure the long-term availability of forest resources through sustainable forest management practices.

Through the valuation of forest resources, market studies, capacity building, and information dissemination campaigns, the project contributed to strengthening the country’s forestry value chain by engaging various stakeholders in the sustainable harvesting, processing, and marketing of forest products while also ensuring that the economic needs of communities are met.

In other countries, such as Malaysia, where ITTO partnered with the Forest Department of Sarawak to implement a community-based conservation project, some local communities have assumed the mantle of leadership in sustainable forest management and conservation. 

A main challenge, particularly in Upper Baram in Sarawak, Malaysia, is the dearth of community-based conservation initiatives, which increases the residents’ vulnerability to the impacts of development pressures and climate change. By empowering local communities in the sustainable management of forests and its natural resources, the project ensures a resilient forest ecosystem that provides opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.

In search of a perfect balance

Improving rural livelihoods entails that the rising demand for resources critical to various industries, such as timber, is counterbalanced on the supply-side. Plantations dedicated to wood production promote sustainable forestry, which addresses the growing need for timber and fiber-based products while ensuring that resources are replaced and continue to provide ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration. Simultaneously, such efforts reduce the pressure on natural forests - a win-win solution.

The project “Implementation of a Community-Based Transboundary Management Plan for the Betung Kerihun National Park (BKNP), West Kalimantan, Indonesia” sought to strengthen long-term conservation of the shared ecosystem between Indonesia and Malaysia. 

Within the framework of the Transboundary Conservation Area (TBCA), ITTO supported the formulation of biodiversity conservation strategies for transboundary ecosystems, with a focus on improving the livelihoods of local communities.

The initiative promoted awareness-raising and partnerships aimed at improving biodiversity management while supporting sustainable livelihoods for local communities. Through these efforts, the project strengthened transboundary conservation governance and fostered greater collaboration in safeguarding one of Borneo’s most important forest ecosystems.

In Benin, forests do not only provide economic benefits to communities but also have great heritage value. ITTO, together with Cercle pour la Sauvegarde des Ressources Naturelles, implemented a project that aimed to conserve 40 sacred forests located within Ramsar sites. These forests, which support a host of ecological, sociocultural, and economic functions, are currently under threat of disappearing primarily due to overexploitation.

The project, by building the capacity of communities on sustainably managing these sacred forests, has slowed down its degradation, ensured that their cultural value remains intact, and provided forest-dependent communities with a more sustainable framework for resource use and income generation.

An inner forest that grows outward

The resounding conservation successes in Benin, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Malaysia and other parts of the world prove that personal responsibility is inseparable from collective action. People must be invested in protecting and conserving the environment so that the outcomes of initiatives are sustainable beyond the project life cycle.

ITTO’s work for the past four decades demonstrates that personal is global. Through its on-the-ground initiatives, ITTO emphasizes that personal commitment to ensure environmental well-being is constitutive of, and just as important as, high-level actions at the national, regional, and global scales.

“Environmental stewardship is, at first instance, a personal commitment. We make conscious choices and actions that can affect the future of our planet,” said ITTO Executive Director Ms Sheam Satkuru. “It is a matter of time for the impacts of our choices and actions to reverberate beyond our personal spaces, as it is now. This is our chance to make a huge difference for future generations.”

Protecting our forests is both a personal and global concern: The forest we carry within us eventually forms part of a global movement that can heal the world’s forests.