Old deciduous forests have come through the last few extreme summers relatively healthy and cool. At the same time, global warming is rapidly increasing. In an article in Focus Online, Prof. Pierre Ibisch explains the strategies available for preserving our landscape as a vital resource: »Green, moist, cool!« This could be the strategic triad for our country in the climate crisis. Because where nature is green, work is being done. Plants capture light radiation with their chlorophyll and use carbon dioxide and water to produce sugar, starch, wood, and biomass of all kinds. Plants materialize solar energy and make it available in ecosystems.

Ecosystems perform a wide range of tasks using green energy. Not only are substances formed, but soil is also built up and loosened, and water is pumped through the soil and biomass, stored, and evaporated. The bare surface of the earth becomes moister, cooler, and more hospitable to life—this applies to forest organisms as well as to the crops that feed us.

Where the land is green, there are not only good living conditions for organisms of all kinds that »consume nature«; rather, living beings even improve the resources for their own existence. No machine, no human technology can do that. A working machine can—when fed with energy and material—convert substances and produce something. But it wears out, needs maintenance, and does not improve through operation. With forests, for example, it is completely different. If they are allowed to grow and mature, they become larger and richer in biomass, can accommodate more and more plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms, and provide a wide range of services.