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A panel discussion held at the UN headquarters highlighted that safeguarding forests is an essential way to manage global freshwater resources and to avoid water shortages, Xinhua reported.
Three-fourths of the fresh water that people use every day comes from forested catchment areas and more than 1.6 billion people live on the forests for food, water, medicines and fuel, forest experts said at the panel discussion marking the International Day of Forests which falls on Monday.
Experts said forested watersheds and wetlands influence how and where rain falls and can filter and clean the water. Forests also play an important role in providing and regulating water in a number of ways, from groundwater recharge to erosion control.
"The protection and restoration of forest watersheds and catchments is not just climate-smart; it is a cost-effective and green alternative to new infrastructure development for water purification," said Manoel Sobral Filho, director of the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat.
"Forests are the planet's natural water towers," he added.
The International Day of Forests is observed annually on March 21. UN statistics show that every year, seven million hectares of natural forests are lost and 50 million hectares of forest land are burned.
