The Tropics: Home to biodiversity, people and opportunity
- UNAA
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
3rd July 2026
The tropics are among the planet’s most vital regions. They are home to around 80% of global biodiversity, nearly half of the world’s forests, and a rapidly growing young population.
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.
Background
The inaugural State of the Tropics Report was launched on 29 June 2014, as the culmination of a collaboration between twelve leading tropical research institutions. The report offers a unique perspective on this increasingly important region. Marking the anniversary of the report’s launch the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/70/267 in 2016, which declared that 29 June of each year is to be observed as the International Day of the Tropics.
The International Day of the Tropics was designated in 2016 to raise awareness to the specific challenges faced by tropical areas, the far-reaching implications of the issues affecting the world’s tropical zone and the need, at all levels, to raise awareness and to underline the important role that countries in the tropics will play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The date commemorates the launch of the inaugural State of the Tropics Report in 2014, a collaborative effort by twelve leading tropical research institutions that provided a comprehensive assessment of environmental, social, and economic conditions across the tropics. While the report itself is no longer regularly updated, its legacy continues through the recognition it helped generate.
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