Every year on June 29, we celebrate the ‘International Day Of The Tropics’. This day helps us to shed some light on the importance of tropical regions and countries. It was first observed in the year 2014, as the culmination of a collaboration between twelve leading tropical research institutions.
The International Day of the Tropics was designated to raise awareness to the specific challenges faced by tropical areas, the far-reaching implications of the issues affecting the world’s tropical zone and the need, at all levels, to raise awareness and to underline the important role that countries in the tropics will play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Tropics are defined as the area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. These regions are typically warm and they experience little seasonal change in day-to-day temperature.
One of the important features of the Tropics is the prevalence of rain in the moist inner regions near the equator, and that the seasonality of rainfall increases with the distance from the equator.
The tropical region faces several challenges such as climate change, deforestation, logging, urbanisation and demographic changes.
The International Day of the Tropics is intended to raise awareness of the particular problems that tropical areas face, the far-reaching impacts of issues affecting the world’s tropical zone, and the need, at all levels, to raise awareness and highlight the critical role that tropical countries will play in achieving sustainable development.
Unlike other International environment events, there is no annual theme for the International Day Of The Tropics. Over these years, tropical nations have made significant progress but still face a variety of challenges that demand focused attention across a range of development indicators and data in order to achieve sustainable development.
The Tropics have over half of the world’s renewable water resources – 54 per cent – yet almost half the region’s population is considered vulnerable to water stress. Even though biodiversity is richer in the Tropics, the loss of biodiversity is also greater there.
According to the United Nations data, by 2050, the region will host most of the world’s people and two-thirds of its children. But the proportion of the urban population living in slum conditions is higher in the Tropics than in the rest of the world. Also, consistent with the higher levels of poverty, more people experience undernourishment in the Tropics than in the rest of the world.
What Is The Future For Tropical Regions
Though the Tropics host nearly 95 per cent of the world’s mangrove forests by area and 99 per cent of the mangrove species, rapid urbanisation, deforestation and global warming are posing a significant threat to the region.
The Tropics have over half of the world’s renewable water resources – 54 per cent – yet almost half the region’s population is considered vulnerable to water stress. Even though biodiversity is richer in the Tropics, the loss of biodiversity is also greater there.
Also read: Amazon forest fires adding to melting of snow in Himalayas
In 2022, for the first time, the Glasgow Leaders Declaration signed by 145 heads of state at the UN climate summit (COP26), promised to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
The Declaration was accompanied by a suite of commitments, including those from public sector donors and private philanthropists to provide $12 billion of forest-related climate finance and $1.7 billion of financing to support indigenous peoples and local communities, and further from private sector agricultural companies and financial institutions to halt forest loss associated with agricultural commodity production and trade.
While the special role of tropical forests in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services has for long been recognised, over the last year a series of international events and initiatives have helped elevate the forest agenda and protect forests in ways that serve both climate as well as nature-oriented objectives. And on this International Day Of The Tropics, let us try to preserve the vast stretches of our tropical forests.
