Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on email
Email

Deforestation on the forefront

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on email
Email

The two-day climate summit attended by world leaders in Glasgow, Scotland will conclude with a multibillion dollar pledge to end deforestation by 2030.

The pledge was to be issued at the UN’s COP26 conference, which will continue for another fortnight as it tries to craft national plans to forestall the most devastating impacts of global warming.

The summit’s chair, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said the agreement on deforestation was pivotal to the overarching ambition of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The pledge is backed by almost $20 billion in public and private funding, and is endorsed by more than 100 leaders representing over 85 percent of the world’s forests, the UK government said. The leaders include those of forest-rich Brazil and Russia, both condemned by activists for accelerating their own rates of deforestation, along with US President Joe Biden.

President Joko Widodo of Indonesia said his own archipelago’s rainforests, mangroves, seas and peatlands were key to restricting climate change. “We are committed to protecting these critical carbon sinks and our natural capital for future generations,” he said in a UK government statement.

The pledge to “halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030” encompasses promises to secure the rights of indigenous peoples, and recognize “their role as forest guardians.”

Despite a UN climate gathering in New York in 2015 having issued a similar declaration, trees continue to be cut down on an industrial scale. Almost a quarter of all man-made emissions of carbon dioxide can be attributed to land use activity such as logging, deforestation and farming. Humans have already cut down half of all Earth’s forests, a practice doubly harmful for the climate when CO2-sucking trees are replaced with livestock or monoculture crops.

Greenpeace criticized the Glasgow initiative for effectively giving the green light to “another decade of deforestation.”

Many studies have shown that the best way of protecting forests worldwide is to keep them under the management of locals with generations of preservation knowledge. It is hoped that the funds earmarked for this initiative will be invested wisely so the goal can be achieved, especially in countries like the Philippines where efforts to address global warming has not been given the attention it deserves.

Deforestation has been a serious concern, especially for countries such as the Philippines that has been losing most of its forests to human activity. This new commitment to ending this threat to our planet will hopefully train renewed attention to the protection of whatever forests we have left so our country can still make a contribution as the world faces the threat of global warming.*

ARCHIVES

Read Article by date

March 2024
MTWTFSS
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Get your copy of the Visayan Daily Star everyday!

Avail of the FREE 30-day trial.