More than 100 nations pledge to end deforestation
At the Glasgow climate summit, countries covering most of the world's forests vowed to halt their loss by 2030.
More than 100 countries, home to the vast majority of the world's forests, pledged at the Glasgow climate summit to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, in one of the first major announcements of the conference and a significant commitment to protect the planet's vital woodlands.
The declaration was backed by nations including those that are home to the great tropical rainforests — the Amazon, the Congo Basin and the forests of Southeast Asia — as well as by billions of dollars in public and private funding pledged to support forest protection and the communities that depend on it.
Forests play a crucial role in the climate system, absorbing and storing enormous quantities of carbon dioxide, and their destruction is a major source of emissions as well as a catastrophe for biodiversity and for Indigenous peoples. Halting their loss is widely seen as essential to limiting warming.
The pledge was broader and better-funded than a previous forest declaration that had failed to stem the tide of destruction, and its backers expressed hope that it marked a genuine turning point.
But campaigners greeted it with cautious optimism tempered by scepticism, noting that previous promises had been broken and that the real test would be whether the fine words translated into action on the ground, where powerful economic forces continue to drive the clearing of forests. The coming years would reveal whether the Glasgow pledge could reverse one of the most destructive and persistent of environmental trends.