By Charles Mpaka:
A new study finds that global deforestation rose to 6.6 million hectares in 2022, effectively putting the world 21 percent off track to meet the target to eliminate deforestation by 2030.
At this rate, it will need immediate and decisive steps to avert this deforestation crisis and steer the world back on the path towards the targets set for 2030.
“Nothing less than a radical transformation of development pathways, finance flows, and governance effectiveness and enforcement is required to shift the world’s trajectory to achieve the 2030 forest goals,” reads the assessment report.
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Ruben Foquet, Malawi Country Director for We Forest, a reforestation organisation with projects across the world, warns of far-reaching consequences of failing to meet the afforestation goals.
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“If the remaining forests are not conserved, and degraded areas miss out on restoration, the people living within and around those landscapes risk losing out on several of the Sustainable Development Goals (zero hunger, clean water, reduced inequalities to name a few) through loss of access to ecosystem services and biodiversity that constitute the fabric of the social, economic and ecological systems we depend on,” he says, asked comment on the findings of the assessment.
At the United Nations climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow in 2021 –and in the background of the Bonn Challenge (2011) and New York Declaration on Forests (2014) –nations committed to eliminate gross deforestation and to restore 350 million hectares of degraded landscapes and forestlands by 2030.
The Forest Declaration Assessment, the work of a coalition of research and civil society groups, has been tracking progress on these commitments since 2015 through these annual reports.
In their latest report released on October 23, they reveal that the world is so far veering off track on forest conservation objectives.
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Titled ‘Off track and falling behind: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals’, the assessment says global deforestation increased on the 2021 rates by 4 percent in 2022.
Primary tropical forests losses alone reached 4.1 million hectares. This is 33 percent higher than is needed to curb forest loss by the end of the decade.
“This backslide puts forest goals even farther out of reach after the small but insufficient progress made in 2021,” reads the report, also observing that the world’s progress on halting the collapse of these is “vastly insufficient”.
There have been some positives though in the form of steady forest regrowth and scaling up of restoration initiatives.
According to the report, the increase in forest regeneration in tropical deforested areas over the past four years shows the recovery potential of natural forests.
However, it suggests cautious optimism on these strides.
“Regrowth is certainly positive, but the ecological conditions characterizing mature forests may take decades to be reestablished.
“While there is evidence that restoration is scaling up globally, tracking progress is hindered by the glaring lack of transparency on public and private efforts to restore forests across the world,” it says.
It further says each year of no sufficient progress on the commitments makes it harder for the world to meet the 2030 goals.
“Progress in 2021 was already insufficient, and the world needed to make up that lost ground (and more) in 2022,” the report says.
The coalition blames the forest losses on governments and a small group of leading companies in agricultural commodity supply chains not prioritizing elimination of deforestation, lack of transparency in the extractives sector and insufficient financial and legal support for grassroots structures.
The 2022 deforestation rate deals a blow to the climate agenda as the report estimates that the loss of increase in gross deforestation-related emissions by 6 percent over the 2021 figures.
“Deforestation in both tropical and non-tropical regions produced significant emissions. This is a 2 percent increase compared to the 2018-20 baseline,” the assessment finds.
The report highlights 18 countries which the 2022 IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] Restoration Barometer say have disclosed progress towards their ecosystem restoration commitments.
Malawi is one of those 18 countries.
The country pledged to restore 4.5 million hectares. With seven years to the deadline, it has restored around 1.7 million hectares, according to the IUCN barometer.
Foquet points out that indigenous forests in Malawi are increasingly falling because of the increasing human population and the resultant surging need for wood fuels for cooking, expansion of agricultural lands and the quest for people to make a living from timber extraction.
“With limited financial and human resource capacity at the level of the Department of Forestry at district level, protected areas remain mostly protected on paper whilst on the ground deforestation rockets. Some forestry projects are temporarily effective, yet lack sustainability built into the system and do not reach anywhere near the scale needed to significantly tip the balance,” he says.
Without long-term financing commitments towards rounded forest landscape restoration initiatives, Malawi is at risk of losing its biodiverse forests at an increasing rate, he warns.
Foquet observes that there is evidence that a mix of considerably sized, well-maintained protected areas under public-private partnerships, strong customary leadership and local stewardship and upscaling of agroforestry practices in smallholder agricultural landscapes has the potential to protect and restore forest landscapes.
“A combination of the three strategies could be taking a central stage as Malawi ploughs its way forward towards its (overly) ambitious pledge,” Foquet says.
According to the Forest Declaration Assessment report, over 50 countries are on track to eliminate deforestation within their borders by 2030, with tropical Asia the only region that is moving towards realizing zero gross deforestation.
“Both developed and developing countries have demonstrated the transformative power of political will and dedicated action. Their efforts have led to dramatic and, in some cases, sustained reductions in deforestation rates,” it says.
However, these successes cannot offset the massive forest loss and degradation which forest ecosystems are suffering at the moment.
“Further, one country’s progress cannot be disentangled from another country’s ecological crisis….. In a globalized economy, all countries bear the responsibility of addressing continued forest loss,” the study says.
Fran Price, Global Forests Lead at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says “the world is failing forests with devastating consequences on a global scale”.
Quoted in a statement on the report, Price says it is impossible to reverse nature loss, address the climate crisis and develop sustainable economies without forests.
According to Price, since the global pledge to end deforestation by 2030 was made, an area of tropical forest the size of Denmark has been lost.
“We are at a critical juncture. Governments and businesses have a huge responsibility to set us on the right pathway. We do not need new forest goals: we need uncompromising ambition, speed and accountability to fulfil the goals that have already been set. It is time to step up,” she says.
