Global News in Canada shows that certainly more than 100 global leaders have pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade, underpinned by $19 billion in public and private funds to invest in protecting and restoring forests.
"I'm told that today 110 leaders have come together, representing over 85 per cent of the world's forest estate to work together to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Tuesday.
The promise, made in a joint statement issued late on Monday at COP26, was backed by the leaders of countries including Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which collectively account for 85% of the world's forests.
The Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forest and Land Use will cover forests totalling more than 13 million square miles, according to a statement released by the UK prime minister's office on behalf of the leaders.
U.S President Joe Biden said a new USA plan would "help the world deliver on our shared goal of halting natural forest loss" and restoring at least an additional 200 million hectares of forest and other ecosystems by 2030.
"We're going to work to ensure markets recognize the true economic value of natural carbon sinks and motivate governments, landowners and stakeholders to prioritize conservation," Biden said.
Deforestation or "forest clearance" is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, a half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Belgium, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute.
ReplyDeleteThe Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines deforestation as the conversion of forest to other land uses (regardless of whether it is human-induced). "Deforestation" and "forest area net change" are not the same: the latter is the sum of all forest losses (deforestation) and all forest gains (forest expansion) in a given period. Net change, therefore, can be positive or negative, depending on whether gains exceed losses, or vice versa.
So-called deforested regions typically incur significant harmful environmental effects such as adverse soil erosion and degradation into wasteland.