COP26: Countries Pledge $12 Billion To Save Forests
An earlier agreement failed to halve deforestation by 2020, or put the world on track to halt it by 2030
The European Union and 11 countries, including Canada, Belgium and Japan, have committed $12 billion as part of the Global Forest Finance Pledge, over the next five years.
Leaders of 137 countries, which collectively account for 90% of the world's forests, also signed the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use that seeks to halt deforestation. India, which has 1.75% of the world's forests, has not signed this pledge.
Deforestation, along with agriculture and land-use change, is the second leading cause of carbon emissions (after electricity and heat production).
An earlier agreement in 2014, called the New York Declaration on Forests, aimed to halve deforestation by 2020, and halt it by 2030. But deforestation has continued.
Nearly 30% of 60,000 tree species are threatened with extinction in the wild due to forest clearance, habitat loss and the direct exploitation of timber and other products.
India's forest and tree cover has increased, as per official figures, but studies show that India lost trees from 1.93 million ha of land, about 14 times the size of Delhi, between 2001 and 2020.
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