Few – if any - resources are infinite, and as climate change, population growth and other factors increase the demands on our planet, while reducing the amount of available resources, it is vital that we take better care of what we’ve got. Global Witness is urging governments, policy makers and consumers to put long term planetary and inter-generational interests above short-term political and economic ones.

The world has recently woken up to the vital importance of forests in mitigating and adapting to climate change. If we don’t end and reverse the trend in deforestation and forest degradation a planetary life support system will be lost and climate change will be severe and irreversible. This grave threat is also a huge opportunity to redefine the political and financial landscape of forests.

Global Witness is working to change international thinking on forest exploitation, to ensure that forests are a benefit to the communities that depend on them, and are regarded as an international asset.

Alongside our work on forests, we are seeking to build awareness of the looming energy supply crunch and to use that as a lever to address the risks of energy security. This is critical to driving the fight against climate change and the imperative shift into safe renewable energy alternatives.

We also need to prevent large-scale depletion and exhaustion of other finite global goods through better regulation, enforcement and governance safeguards. In this light we are developing stands of work on issues such as land-grabbing for food and biofuels and mismanagement and fraud in the global carbon offsets market.