The World Bank tells us that forests are very important to the incomes of very poor people:

Well-managed forests are an effective tool to helping end poverty on a livable planet, especially considering that over 90% of people living in extreme poverty rely on forests for some of their livelihoods. Forest landscapes also cover more than 80% of the area that Indigenous Peoples occupy, many of whom see forests as the source of their livelihoods, food production, and cultural identity.

Yet, forests remain under threat.

One of the reasons that forests are under threat is that poor people cut bits of them down to grow a crop of runty corn for a year or three before moving to another slash and burn site. Or otherwise over-exploit the resources of the forests so that there’s less forest left.

That available solution being to get on with that task of growing the global economy so that we’ve abolished the sort of poverty that requires burning down a forest to grow a crop or three of runty corn.

This is, after all, what we did. Forest cover in the rich world has been rising pretty much since we became rich. The low point of American cover was the 1920s, for example. That is, rich people are rich enough not to have to carve hardscrabble farms out of the New England countryside and can abandon them and allow the area to reforest. Which is, some will be surprised to find out, exactly what did happen. Those autumnal colour palettes that hundreds of thousands travel to see each year were clear cut fields only a century ago.

Rich humans don’t cut down forests. So, get that last fraction of humanity over the hump and into economic wealth and the forests will be saved.

As we say, there really is an available solution here. We did it, everywhere rich did it, everywhere that becomes rich will. So, that’s the plan. Get rich to save the forests.