International Day of the Tropics 29 June

The future belongs to the Tropics

The International Day of the Tropics celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the tropics while highlighting unique challenges and opportunities nations of the Tropics face. It provides an opportunity to take stock of progress across the tropics, to share tropical stories and expertise and to acknowledge the diversity and potential of the region.

The Ecosystem

The Tropics are a region of the Earth, roughly defined as the area between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. Although topography and other factors contribute to climatic variation, tropical locations are typically warm and experience little seasonal change in day-to-day temperature. An important feature of the Tropics is the prevalence of rain in the moist inner regions near the equator, and that the seasonality of rainfall increases with the distance from the equator. The tropical region faces several challenges such as climate change, deforestation, logging, urbanisation and demographic changes.

The Human System

Tropical nations have made significant progress but face a variety of challenges that demand focused attention across a range of development indicators and data in order to achieve sustainable development.

• By 2050, the region will host most of the world's people and two-thirds of its children.
• Consistent with the higher levels of poverty, more people experience undernourishment in the Tropics than in the rest of the world.
• The proportion of the urban population living in slum conditions is higher in the Tropics than in the rest of the World.