OREANDA-NEWS. The "Living Planet Index" had decreased by more than 50% during the period from 1970 to 2010 with a particularly significant decrease of 56% in the tropics ("Living Planet Report 2014"). While tropical forests in Southeast Asia, one of the mega-biodiversity spots in the world, still hold valuable ecosystems, its forests have been lost drastically.

As part of the Toyota and WWF partnership the "Living Asian Forest Project" will aim, at helping the conservation of tropical forests and wildlife in Southeast Asia. Projects include landscapes inside WWF's priority places in Borneo (Kalimantan) and Sumatra. In the future and depending on the results of the initial local initiatives, the project may expand to the Greater Mekong region, across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Unsustainable production and use of key commodities has been one of the main reasons of deforestation and increased threats to endangered species in the regions. The project activities will therefore focus on increasing the sustainability of natural resources such as wood, paper and pulp, palm oil and natural rubber. The project will also include wildlife surveys, restoration of forests, and community empowerment. The inclusion of work on commodities is to implement WWF's "One Planet Perspective"*2 vision which calls for better choices for managing, using and sharing natural resources, and this framework provides a set of effective activities in order to conserve biodiversity and forests also as important storage of CO2 in the regions.