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This would include a new $US1.5 billion fund ($2 billion) to protect the Congo Basin, which is home to the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world.
Although forests take the emissions out of the atmosphere, this natural climate buffer is rapidly disappearing.
The world lost 258,000 square kilometres of forest in 2020, according to WRI’s deforestation tracking initiative Global Forest Watch, an area larger than the United Kingdom. The Geneva-based World Meteorological Organisation said that parts of the Amazon rainforest have gone from being a carbon “sink” that sucks carbon dioxide from the air to a source of CO2 due to deforestation and reduced humidity in the region.
Monday’s agreement vastly expands a similar commitment made by 40 countries as part of the 2014 New York Declaration of Forests and goes further than ever before in laying out the resources to reach that goal.
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Alongside this more than 30 financial institutions with more than $US8.7 trillion ($11.6 trillion) of global assets – including Aviva, Schroders and Axa – are expected to commit to eliminate investment in activities linked to deforestation.
“Today we celebrate — tomorrow we will start pressing for the deal to be delivered,” said Roberto Waack, a Brazilian business leader and biologist and Chatham House visiting fellow.
“The deal is a significant milestone on the road to protecting our precious forests and tackling the climate crisis.
Executive director of Trillion Trees, a joint venture between BirdLife International, Wildlife Conservation Society and WWF, John Lotspeich, said it was fantastic that leaders were finally addressing deforestation.
“Yes, we must restore forests and plant trees to achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement.
“But at the same time, if forests continue to disappear at the current catastrophic rate, all this work will be to no avail. And frankly, the silence around the value of intact forests has been deafening.”
A highway stretching between the Tapajos National Forest, left, and a soy field in Belterra, Para state, Brazil. Credit:AP
The United Nations climate office warned this week that the world remains off target for meeting its goal of cutting emissions as part of international efforts to curb global warming.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide were all above levels in the pre-industrial era before 1750, when human activities “started disrupting Earth’s natural equilibrium”, the office said.
with Reuters
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