A forest activist inspects land clearing and drainage of a natural forest in Riau province, Sumatra, Indonesia.
A third of the world's forest has been lost since the last ice age, and 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gases come from forest degradation.
A new pledge made at the COP26 climate conference hopes to change this stark picture. Key forest nations signed the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which aims to reduce deforestation to zero by the year 2030. The pledge has raised hopes that the world will be able to curb the devastating impacts of depredation.
Simon Lewis is a researcher of global change science at the University of Leeds and University College London. Two-thirds of the world's species are in the world's tropical forests.
There are also serious caveat to the pledge, such as the fact that similar declarations have been made before, often to little avail.
What is the new pledge about?
It was signed by 141 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, three of the four countries with the most tropical forest in 2020.
The countries are committed to reversing forest loss and land degradation by the year 2030. It does not qualify this by referring only to illegal deforestation, which is what many other pledges do, meaning it is attempting to cover all illegal activity.
Advertisement
The pledge is supported by $12 billion in public funds and $7.2 billion in private financing. The land rights of indigenous people and local communities will be supported by $1.7 billion.
Lewis says there is still uncertainty about whether the pledge means zero or net zero. No loss of old growth forests would be a result of zero deforestation. If new forests were planted at the same rate, old growth forests could still be cleared. Lewis says that the former is better for carbon and biodiversity.
What impact could it have?
It is hard to overstate the impact of ending depredation on a number of issues.
33 million hectares of forest loss would be avoided by the end of the century if all countries ended forest loss by the pledge, according to an analysis by the World Resources Institute. It would avoid emissions of 19 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is twice the annual emissions of China.
It would be a real contribution to the reduction of emissions in general. When Brazil reduced emissions, it was the biggest reduction of emissions in the world. The easiest way to reduce emissions is the reduction of deforestation.
She says that maintaining forests supports the agenda of climate change by helping to maintain regional climate balance. The Amazon regulates the microclimate of the continent.
