Forests Are Key To Prevent Climate Breakdown
We are in a planetary emergency: forests hold the key to preventing a climate breakdown, but decisive action is needed from governments and companies.
19th September 2019
If we’re to avoid the catastrophic impacts of a climate breakdown, and achieve the SDGs, then protecting and restoring forests has to be at the top of the agenda of those gathering in New York this week for the UN General Assembly and Climate Summit.
We need to see real action towards: halting the conversion of forests to agriculture by 2030 and other land uses and preventing a repeat of the fires of 2019; restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscapes, and promoting healthy, carbon rich, natural forests alongside productive forests; and increasing the proportion of forests under protection or sustainable management.
We are in a planetary emergency: forests hold the key to preventing a climate breakdown, but decisive action is needed from governments and companies. More than ever before, we now know how important forests are to stabilizing our climate and providing us with essential services such as clean water and medicines. We have more business commitments to protect forests than ever before. We have more public finance invested in halting deforestation and restoring forests than ever before. Yet, we are losing forests, like never before.
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), which brought together governments, companies, civil society and indigenous peoples in an effort to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed by all UN Member States the following year, not only included a target to halt deforestation by 2020 but recognized the critical role forests play in helping achieve other goals. And all these efforts have been complemented with pledges by hundreds of major companies to make their supply chains deforestation and conversion free.
Instead, as 2020 approaches, deforestation is still rising. From Indonesia to the Amazon, we’re seeing forests go up in flames. These immense fires have released vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – and given us a terrifying glimpse of what a changing climate looks like – both as a cause and result of forest fires.
This is a planetary emergency. If we’re to avoid the catastrophic impacts of a climate breakdown, and achieve the SDGs, then protecting and restoring forests has to be at the top of the agenda of world leaders, civil society and businesses, who are gathering in New York this week for the UN General Assembly and Climate Summit.
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