On 27, 28 and 29 September, the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), will proudly host the 2nd Digital with Purpose (DWP) Global Summit at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

This event, to be hosted at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, sets up the scene for the upcoming discussions around the Biodiversity Programme at the Summit.

Tropical forests are the planet’s biologically richest ecosystems. They also provide a diversity of natural products and critical ecosystem services, such as reducing floods, storing forest carbon, and helping to stabilize regional and global climates. Unfortunately, tropical forests are being imperilled by many human activities. The greatest direct driver of tropical forest disruption is commercial agriculture, followed by timber and mining industries, fossil-fuel extraction, small-scale farming, road and infrastructure expansion, and novel pathogens. Climate change is also becoming an increasingly potent and varied driver of change in the tropics. At regional scales, tropical forests and wildlife in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania all face differing combinations of environmental threats. Given current trends, many tropical species will become vulnerable to synergisms that can occur when they are affected, often fatally, by combinations of different environmental drivers. Amid all of this bad news, there is also some good news for tropical forests, providing a ray of hope for the future.

We are very honoured to announce that at the event we will have the participation of Prof. Helena Freitas, UNESCO Chair and the Lead for the Biodiversity agenda at the DwP Global Summit and the distinguished presence of Prof. Bill Laurance from James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. Prof. Bill Laurance holds an Australian Laureate Fellowship, one of Australia’s highest scientific awards. He also holds the Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Laurance has made significant contributions to understanding the impacts of habitat fragmentation and deforestation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, particularly in tropical rainforests and has been an active advocate for conservation and sustainability of the biodiversity in this planet.

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