Amelia Cutting
The first major deal of the COP26 climate summit, over 100 world leaders have promised to end deforestation by 2030.
What is the deal?
Named the Glasgow Leader’s Declaration on Forests and Land Use, the deal includes:
- A pledge from CEO’s to eliminate activities linked to deforestation.
- £1.5 billion funding from the UK government for forests.
- A £5.3 billion private finance and £8.75 billion public funding for restoring degraded land.
- Support of indigenous communities.
- Protection of forests.
- Mitigating wildfire damage.
The destruction of trees contributes to climate change because it depletes forests that absorb carbon dioxide- a warming gas.
“We have to stop the devastating loss of our forests’, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, and ‘end the role of humanity as nature’s conqueror, and instead become nature’s custodian.”
Governments of 28 countries also committed to helping remove deforestation from the global trade of food and products including palm oil, soya and cocoa. These industries fuel forest loss by cutting down trees to make space for crops or animals.
Significantly, more than 30 of the world’s biggest financial companies: Aviva, Schriders and Axa included, have promised to end investment in activities linked to deforestation.
“More leaders than ever before” have made this commitment, according to Mr Johnson. 110 of these leaders represent 85% of the world’s forests.
This is also the first major announcement which aims to “keep alive” the targets of the Paris Agreement, of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees celsius.
What is the Paris Agreement?
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. Adopted in 2015 at COP21 in Paris, its goal is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius.
This agreement was the first time all nations were brought into a common cause to undertake large efforts to combat climate change.
Criticism of the deal
In 2014 there was a similar deforestation pledge.
The New York Declaration on Forests promised to half tropical deforestation and restore 150 million hectares of land by 2020.
According to a progress report published last October, tropical primary forest loss has generally increased with most countries not following through.
However, the signatories did not detail how the implementation of the deal would be monitored. Jo Blackman, head of forests policy and advocacy at Global Witness said: “We were expecting more detail and it’s disappointing we don’t have that”.
“We’ve seen previous declarations to halt and halve deforestation from governments that haven’t been met”, she continued.
Praise for the deal
Climate experts have broadly welcomed the deforestation commitment.
Justin Adams, executive director of the Tropical Forest Alliance, said that there was now “a real dialogue and a real commitment to be working together.”
“Those conversations have not happened before, in terms of how we can make this all happen”, he said.
Professor Simon Lewis, an expert on climate and forests at University College London, said: “It is good news to have a political commitment to end deforestation from so many countries, and significant funding to move forward on that journey.”
COP26 Continues
COP26 continues until Friday 12th November, and lots of new announcements regarding the impact of climate change as well as schemes and initiatives to help combat it are expected to be made during this time.
Featured image courtesy of Arnaud Mesureur via Unsplash. No changes or alterations were made to this image. Image licence can be found here.
Amelia Cutting
I'm Amelia- a graduate from the University of Leeds and current NCTJ Level 5 Diploma student!