Global forests pledge will fail without urgent action, report warns

Countries will fail to meet a globally agreed target to stop deforestation by the end of the decade unless urgent action is taken, a report this week warned. 

Aerial view of a burnt area of the Amazon forest in Labrea, southern Amazonas State, Brazil, on September 17, 2022. AFP - MICHAEL DANTAS

The 2022 Forest Declaration Assessment found that while the felling of forests had slowed in 2021 by a “modest” 6.3 percent compared with the two previous years, their loss and degradation would continue beyond 2030.

This is because the progress fell short of the annual 10 percent reduction in deforestation needed to meet the much-celebrated target signed by 145 countries at the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow last November.

“It’s a good start, but we are not on track … The picture is not yet rosy,” said Erin Matson of Climate Focus, one of the organisations who wrote the report.

A clearer idea of deforestation trends would be possible once data from successive years was studied, she added.

Vital challenge

To form their assessment, researchers measured the ecological health of forests using the forest landscape integrity index, as well as changes to forest canopy shown by satellite data.

Signatories of the Glasgow pledge, who represent 85 percent of the world’s forests, collectively agreed to invest US$19.2 billion worth of private and public funds in projects to halt and reverse global deforestation.

Experts agree that global warming cannot be limited to 1.5C – as per the Paris Agreement – without ending deforestation, one of the biggest environmental challenges of our lifetime.

• Protected Amazon 'climate buffer' lands are now emitting carbon
• Climate change driving unprecedented forest fire loss

Forests sequester some 4 billion tonnes of carbon in the trees and soil every year. Their destruction and degradation, meanwhile, accounts for some 10 percent of emissions worldwide.

The report says urgent action is needed to put the world on track to meet its deforestation pledge – including a “dramatic increase” in funding of “up to 200 times” existing levels.

The assessment, which was carried out by a number of civil society and research groups, is the first to measure progress to end deforestation since the Glasgow pledge was signed.

It comes as countries prepare for the Cop27 climate conference being held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in November.