Tropical Rainforest photo by Crystal Mirallegro via Unsplash

A Valentine to Earth’s Three Green Hearts

A minuscule sampling of the profuse beauty of Earth’s Three Green Hearts.

Our beloved Earth has three green hearts — Amazonia, Congo and Sundaland [1] — the world’s three major equatorial rainforest systems. These are places of unfathomable complexity and diversity, places of beauty and wonder. They are the living embodiment of agaya and ubuntu — joyous, raucous, mysterious, fierce and lovely.

Tropical Moist Forests of the World (by Terpsichores)

These equatorial forests are also places under threat, where we are losing vast swathes of habitat, countless species are threatened or endangered, and our planet’s ability to capture and store carbon is being jeopardized by deforestation and fires.

Our hearts are breaking. These sacred places must be preserved, healed and restored.

In 2019, Novasutras partnered with the #Amazon4Amazon campaign working toward protection for Amazonia. In the coming months, look for new developments in that campaign, and new campaigns and meditation offerings focused on Congo and Sundaland.

Photo of orangutan (Pongo abelii) from Sumatran forest by Dr. Michelle Merrill (some rights reserved: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Photo of Kris, an orangutan (Pongo abelii) from the Sumatran forest (photo by Dr. Michelle Merrillsome rights reserved: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

[1] Sundaland here refers to the rainforests of the Sunda shelf, encompassing the complex of the rainforests of the Indonesian archipelago and Maylay peninsula in Southeast Asia, especially the remaining intact forests on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Unlike Amazonia and Congo, there is no single river basin to characterize these forests.

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