{"id":178397,"date":"2025-12-11T04:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T04:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/178397\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T04:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T04:22:08","slug":"millions-of-hectares-are-still-being-cut-down-every-year-how-can-we-protect-global-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/178397\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of hectares are still being cut down every year. How can we protect global forests?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Bel\u00e9m last month, Brazil\u2019s President Lula da Silva urged world leaders<\/a> to agree to roadmaps away from fossil fuels and deforestation and pledge the resources to meet these goals.<\/p>\n

After failing to secure consensus, COP president Andre Corr\u00eaa do Lago announced these roadmaps as a voluntary initiative. Brazil will report back on progress at next year\u2019s UN climate summit<\/a>, COP31, when it hands the presidency to Turkey and Australia chairs the negotiations. <\/p>\n

Why now?<\/p>\n

These goals originate in the outcomes of the first global stocktake<\/a> of the world\u2019s progress towards the Paris Agreement goals, undertaken in 2023. <\/p>\n

At the COP28 talks in Dubai in that year, there was an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels and to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.<\/p>\n

Yet achieving these goals relies on a \u201cjust transition\u201d, where no country is left behind in the transition to a low-carbon future, including a \u201ccore package<\/a>\u201d of public finance to address climate adaptation, and loss and damage. The Bel\u00e9m outcome<\/a> fell short. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s President Luiz Lula da Silva speaks during a roundtable with leaders of tropical forest countries and nations committed to investing in the tropical forest fund.
\n Fernando Llano\/AAP<\/a><\/p>\n

Forests need urgent protection<\/p>\n

Forest loss and degradation is continuing, at an average rate of 25 million hectares a year over the last decade, according to the Global Forest Watch<\/a>. This is 63% higher<\/a> than the rate needed to meet existing targets to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. Yet the climate pledges submitted for the Bel\u00e9m COP remain far off track from this goal.<\/p>\n

In the 2025 Land Gap Report<\/a>, my colleagues and I calculated the scale of this \u201cforest gap\u201d \u2013 the gap between 2030 targets and the plans countries are putting forward in their climate pledges.<\/p>\n

We show the pledges submitted up until this year\u2019s climate summit would cut deforestation by less than 50% by 2030, meaning forests spanning almost 4 million hectares would still be cut down. The pledges would lead to forest degradation \u2013 where the ecological integrity of a forest area is diminished \u2013 of almost 16 million hectares. This is only a 10% reduction on current rates.<\/p>\n

Together, this equates to an anticipated \u201cforest gap\u201d of around 20 million hectares expected to be lost or degraded each year by 2030. That\u2019s about twice the size of South Korea. <\/p>\n

While this underscores the inadequacy of commitments, the analysis is based on pledges submitted up to the start of November 2025, at which point only 40% of countries had submitted an updated plan. Major pledges submitted during COP31, such as from the European Union and China, don\u2019t change this analysis. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

This graph shows that deforestation will only slightly decline to 2030.
\n The Land Gap Report, author supplied.<\/a>, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/p>\n

Forest wins in Bel\u00e9m<\/p>\n

A new fund for forest conservation called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility<\/a> was launched in Brazil, attracting $US6.7 billion in pledges ($A9.9 billion).<\/p>\n

The forest fund focuses on tropical deforestation, the leading cause of emissions from forest loss. But it has a key weakness: the limited monitoring of forest degradation<\/a>, which could allow countries to receive payments while still logging primary forests<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The fund will establish<\/a> a science committee and plans to revise monitoring indicators over the next three years, creating an opportunity to strengthen its ability to protect tropical forests.<\/p>\n

The COP30 leaders\u2019 summit also saw the launch of a historic pledge<\/a> of $US1.8 billion ($A2.7 billion) to support conservation and recognition of 160 million hectares of Indigenous Peoples\u2019 and local communities\u2019 territories in tropical forest countries.<\/p>\n

But global action on forests needs to extend beyond the tropics. Across both deforestation and forest degradation, countries in the global north are responsible for over half of global tree cover loss<\/a> over the past decade. <\/p>\n

Beyond tropical forests<\/p>\n

A global accountability framework on forests is needed to increase ambition on climate action, including in countries and regions with extensive forests outside of the tropics, such as Australia, Canada and Europe. <\/p>\n

In these regions, industrial logging is a major driver of tree-cover loss but receives far less political attention than tropical deforestation. Wide gaps in reporting \u2013 between deforestation and degradation \u2013 mean logging-related degradation often goes unreported. <\/p>\n

In a recent report<\/a>, only 59 countries said they monitor forest degradation. Of these, almost three-quarters are tropical forest countries. <\/p>\n

The IUCN World Conservation Congress<\/a> which convened in Abu Dhabi this year prior to the climate talks, passed a motion<\/a> on delivering equitable accountability and means of implementation for international forest protection goals. This arose from a recognised need to promote greater equity<\/a> between forest protection standards across countries. <\/p>\n

All of this points to an urgent need to tackle accountability in global forest governance. The forest roadmap to be developed for COP31 in Turkey could help drive stronger alignment and transparency across UN processes \u2013 from the UN Forum on Forests<\/a>\u2019 2017\u20132030 plan to the Kunming\u2013Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework\u2019s<\/a> 2030 target to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. <\/p>\n

Australia could lead on forests<\/p>\n

Australia could help shape global forest ambition in the year ahead. It is currently the only country whose emissions pledge<\/a> promises to halt and reverse deforestation and degradation by 2030 \u2013 a clear signal that developed countries must lead. <\/p>\n

As President of Negotiations at COP31, Australia can also work to bring Brazil\u2019s fossil-fuel and forest roadmaps into formal negotiations. But this depends on two things: credible leadership from developed countries and long-overdue climate finance. As a deforestation hotspot<\/a> with ongoing native forest logging<\/a>, Australia has considerable work to do to meet this responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Bel\u00e9m last month, Brazil\u2019s President Lula da Silva urged world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-178397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}