Climate negotiations in Glasgow began on Monday, with leaders from more than 100 countries committing to ending deforestation by 2030, including Brazil, China, and the United States. Instead, they hope to conserve forests that are critical for absorbing carbon dioxide and lowering the rate of global warming.
As stated in the countries’ joint declaration, the pledge will require “further transformative action,” It will be accompanied by a number of measures intended to assist in putting it into effect. However, some environmental advocacy groups have criticized them for lacking teeth, claiming that they will allow deforestation to continue.
President Biden and the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, were expected to attend an event on Tuesday morning. In addition, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom was supposed to announce the deforestation accord.
He is anticipated to say something along the lines of “These huge teeming ecosystems — these temples of nature — are the hearts and lungs of our planet.”
To safeguard and restore forests in various methods, governments offered $12 billion, with private sector pledges totaling $7 billion, including $1.7 billion for Indigenous peoples. In addition, more than 30 financial institutions have pledged to refrain from investing in companies involved in deforestation. A new set of principles lays out a road forward to eliminate deforestation from global supply chains.
Many policy experts have hailed these steps as a significant step forward while underlining that much more remains to be done to address the problem.
In a statement, Frances Seymour of the World Resources Institute, a research group, stated, “While the financial announcements we’ve heard in Glasgow are encouraging, they remain minor in comparison to the vast private and public flows, typically in the form of subsidies, that fuel deforestation.”
The vow comes amid increased recognition of the importance of nature in addressing the climate issue, something that the United Kingdom has attempted to emphasize at the United Nations climate meeting, known as COP26. Intact forests and peatlands, for example, serve as natural carbon sinks, storing carbon and keeping it locked away from the rest of the environment. However, when these places are logged, burned, or drained, the ecosystems shift to a state of releasing greenhouse gases into the environment.
According to the World Resources Institute, if tropical deforestation were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases globally, trailing only China and the United States in terms of emissions. The commodity agriculture industry is responsible for much of the world’s deforestation, as people cut down trees to make way for cattle, soy, cocoa, and palm oil.
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The importance of healthy forests extends far beyond carbon sequestration. They filter water, cool the air, and even produce rain, which helps support agriculture in other parts of the world. In addition, they are critical to the long-term survival of biodiversity, which is experiencing its crisis as extinction rates continue to rise.
Efforts to protect woods in the past have been unsuccessful. Although one initiative recognized by the Paris Climate Agreement intends to compensate forested countries for minimizing tree loss, the program has made only moderate progress.
Previous vows to put an end to deforestation have likewise fallen short. The United Nations made similar commitments in a plan presented in 2017. However, the New York Declaration on Forests, signed in 2014 and called for the abolition of deforestation by 2030, stated targets without providing a plan for achieving them, and deforestation proceeded.
Some environmentalists predict that the same thing will happen this time around.
According to Carolina Pasquali, executive director of Greenpeace Brazil, the agreement “allows another decade of forest devastation and is not binding.” “In the meantime, the Amazon is already on the verge of collapse and will not be able to withstand years more of deforestation.”
Some of the new pledge’s supporters point out that it boosts the number of participating countries and includes concrete strategies to safeguard forests.
“What we’re doing here is trying to change the economics on the ground so that forests are worth more alive than dead,” said Eron Bloomgarden, whose group, Emergent, helps match public and private investors with forested countries and provinces looking to receive payments for reducing deforestation.
“What we’re doing here is trying to change the economics on the ground so that forests are worth more alive than dead,” he added.
According to the statement, the participating governments pledged “help for smallholders, indigenous peoples, and local communities, who rely on forests for their livelihoods and play a critical role in forest stewardship,” according to the statement.
In Ecuador, Tuntiak Katan, general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and a descendant of the Shuar people, commended the assistance for Indigenous and local communities. Still, he expressed skepticism about pouring money into a system that he believes is flawed.
His conclusion: “If this money does not work directly with Indigenous peoples, and shoulder to shoulder with them, it is not going to have the essential impact.”
According to findings published this year, science has revealed that sections of the Amazon are now emitting more carbon than they are storing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend climate talks in Glasgow, despite his country being one of the major signatories to the deforestation declaration. China has suffered significant forest loss as its population and industries have grown in recent decades. Still, it has lately vowed to reforest and develop sustainable tree farming as part of a national forest policy.
Approximately 23 percent of China’s surface is covered by forests, according to Chinese estimates, up from 17 percent in 1990, according to the World Bank. The extent and quality of that increased tree cover have been called into doubt by some researchers. Still, the government has made expanded reforestation an important part of its climate plans. Many sections of the country are noticeably greener than they were just a few decades ago.
In any case, China’s involvement in the new commitment may put the country’s reliance on wood imported from Russia, Southeast Asia, and African countries, which may include substantial quantities of illegally felled trees, to the test.
Xinhua news agency stated that in a written message to the Glasgow summit, Mr. Xi “emphasized the duty of affluent countries in fighting climate change, stating that they should not only do more themselves, but should also provide support to help underdeveloped countries do better.”
