rainforests are among the most complex ecosystems on Earth. Rainforests have the highest biodiversity of any terrestrial eco-system.
They contain more than half the species in the entire world biota.
Although they occupy a small part of the Earth’s surface, rainforests are key to maintaining clean air and a healthy environment.
The Internet governance ecosys-tem is a little like the rainforest. In the rainforest, innumerably diverse plants and animals coexist in a highly complex system.
In the “virtual rain-forest,” we have an endless and growing diver-sity of networks, services, applications, regimes, and other properties that coexist in a mutually interdependent mechanism of communication, coordination, and collaboration.
One thing we’ve learned is that the rainforest as a whole isn’t manageable.
We can’t govern or control it, but we can damage and destroy it. In the Internet gov-ernance ecosystem, many players with different legal statuses operate on a variety of layers — on local, national, regional, and international lev-els — driven by technical innovation, user needs, market opportunities, and political interests.