World is far from the promise of ending deforestation by 2030

The world is not on track to meet the commitments it has made to end forest loss and land degradation by 2030, and also to restore already degraded areas. And Brazil, with its high levels of deforestation, bears some of the responsibility.

And why is this important? Deforestation and degradation are directly associated with more greenhouse gas emissions and, consequently, with more impetus to the climate crisis and less possibility of preventing the planet from exceeding 1.5°C of temperature increase.

This is the conclusion of a report by the Forest Declaration Assessment (in free translation, assessment of the declaration of forests), released this Monday (24).

The report takes into account the document signed by 145 nations in 2021 at COP26 (the UN conference on climate change), the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use. It also considers the commitments made in the New York Declaration on Forests, which points to the need to restore 350 million hectares of forests.

According to the assessment, even though emissions associated with deforestation represent only 10% to 12% of total emissions in the world, the elimination of this share of gases is important to achieve what was agreed under the Paris Agreement.

The document highlights the limited time to eliminate deforestation, as agreed in international declarations. “Despite encouraging signs, there is no global indicator up to date for achieving the 2030 goals,” the report notes.

The assessment also states that, globally, a 10% annual reduction in deforestation is needed to reach the 2030 target.

The tropical part of Asia is the only region in the world on the right track to be able to stop deforestation by 2030, according to the document, which points out that emissions from deforestation of primary forests have been falling for five consecutive years in countries in the region.

According to the report, robust legal mechanisms, such as moratoriums, are important for protecting forests and have been put in place in previous years. The soy moratorium in Brazil is a good example. From then on, the sale of products originating in areas with deforestation was prohibited. The PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon) is also mentioned by the authors of the evaluation.

Despite this, more recently, a weakening or reversal of such mechanisms has been observed. When commenting on the matter, the document mentions Brazil.

“A 2021 study showed that Indonesia, as well as four other tropical forest countries — Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Peru — have relaxed social and environmental regulations in recent years,” the report says.

The case of Indonesia is exemplified by the non-renewal of the palm oil moratorium, which ended in September 2021. Despite this, previous actions in the country associated with palm have led to considerable reductions in destruction and the lowest deforestation associated with 20 years. to this plantation, despite the expansion of production, says the document.

In any case, Brazil is the leader in tropical forest deforestation in the world and, due to its size, the destruction in the country makes the 2030 global goal difficult. Despite the Brazilian weight in the account, Latin America, as a whole, had a net reduction in tropical deforestation in 2021 compared to the 2018-2020 average.

Despite the troubling data, there is also “remarkable progress in reforestation efforts over the past two decades,” which has led to new forests comparable in size to Peru and gains in vegetation cover in 36 countries, the report notes.