A coalition of nearly two dozen civil society organizations will release a comprehensive assessment on October 14 examining whether world leaders are meeting pledges to halt forest loss by 2030, ahead of next month’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
The Forest Declaration Assessment, coordinated by Climate Focus, tracks progress on global forest commitments including the 2021 Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use signed by over 140 countries. The report will be launched at 12:01 a.m. GMT on October 14.
An embargoed media briefing is scheduled for Thursday, October 9 at 9:00 a.m. EDT featuring experts who will preview findings and discuss forest initiatives likely to be addressed at the Belém climate talks.
Panelists include Erin Matson, Senior Consultant at Climate Focus and Lead Coordinator of the assessment; Dr. Sassan Saatchi, co-founder and CEO of CTrees who also serves as senior scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Dr. Elisabeth Hoch, senior analyst at Climate and Company.
The assessment has tracked forest protection efforts since 2015, initially monitoring the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests before expanding to cover the Glasgow Declaration. It provides objective data on performance by countries, companies, financial institutions and other entities in keeping their commitments.
Previous assessments have painted a sobering picture. The 2024 report, titled “Forests under Fire,” found that forested Key Biodiversity Areas suffered over a million hectares of tree cover loss in 2023. The 2023 assessment concluded the world remains off track to reach 2030 goals of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation.
Climate Focus notes that despite encouraging signs in some regions, not a single global indicator is currently on track to meet the 2030 goals of stopping forest loss and degradation while restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscape.
COP30, scheduled for November in Belém, Brazil, takes place at a critical juncture with just five years remaining to meet the 2030 deadline. The summit’s location in a gateway city to the Amazon rainforest adds symbolic weight to discussions about tropical forest protection.
Brazil has proposed several forest related initiatives for COP30 consideration, including a market based forest fund that has generated both support and criticism. Supporters view financial mechanisms as essential to incentivize conservation, while critics worry about placing price tags on nature.
The Glasgow Declaration represented unprecedented attention to forests at a UN climate summit, with signatories pledging to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. However, subsequent monitoring has revealed gaps between commitments and implementation.
Tracking progress remains challenging due to fragmented and incomplete data on restoration efforts, though local, regional and global initiatives to improve monitoring have made headway according to previous Forest Declaration Assessments.
The coalition producing the report includes research organizations, think tanks, NGOs and advocacy groups spanning multiple continents. Since 2023, findings have been presented through the Forest Declaration Dashboard, an interactive tool developed with Systems Change Lab that allows detailed exploration of progress data.
The upcoming report will likely examine financial flows toward forest protection, company supply chain commitments, Indigenous peoples’ land rights, and national policy implementation. Previous assessments have highlighted insufficient finance, weak enforcement and conflicts between economic development priorities and conservation goals.
Forests play multiple critical roles in climate mitigation by storing carbon, regulating water cycles, maintaining biodiversity and supporting Indigenous and local communities. Tropical forests alone store approximately 250 billion tons of carbon in their vegetation and soils.
Whether the 2030 forest goals remain achievable depends on dramatically accelerating current efforts. The assessment coalition argues that achieving these targets requires sustained political will, investment increases and meaningful engagement with forest dependent communities.
The October 14 report release comes amid growing recognition that meeting Paris Agreement climate targets without protecting and restoring forests would be extremely difficult if not impossible. Forest loss currently accounts for roughly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Source: newsghana.com.gh
