New Commitments by Forest and Developed Countries to Increase Ambition to Act - Forest countries are developing national and sub-national plans and policies through which they will move from readiness efforts to concrete emission reduction programs, and governments have committed significant resources to incentivize and support action by forest countries to reduce deforestation...

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Partnerships, Progress to Protect & Restore Forests

Paris, 1 December 2015 - Leaders in the global drive to protect and restore forests met on Tuesday to announce a new focus on implementing partnerships with billions of dollars in additional resources before 2020 to ensure healthy forests and the sustainable farming and livelihoods that depend on them.

“It is only with bold commitments, leadership, cooperation and tenacity that it will be possible to safeguard the world’s forests...there can be no room for failure”, The Prince of Wales said at the opening of the Forest Focus under the Lima to Paris Action Agenda climate action programme at Paris COP21.

Around one billion people depend directly on forests for their livelihoods, and most of the remaining six billion of us depend on forests for the air we breathe, the rainfall that grows our food, and products we use every day. But each year, 12 million hectares of forest are destroyed and this loss is responsible for roughly 11 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“There’s no climate change solution without forests. We need to move beyond the speeches and declarations to accelerated implementation; but for that we need to have the right incentives in place. Performance-based finance is essential to achieve the ambition the world needs“, said Felipe Calderon, Former President of Mexico.

“Forest countries in partnership with other governments, the private sector and civil society are set for anincreased international effort to eliminate natural deforestation and forest degradation in a few decades. The success of the LPAA and its action area on Forests relies on effective synergies between state and non-state actors, between investment and forest management -- all together rallied behind sustainably managed forests as a common goal.” said Peru’s Minister of the Environment Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.

On Monday, at the COP21 UN climate change confernce, heads of Government from major forest countries and partner countries also joined together to endorse forests as a key climate solution. Sixteen countries recommitted to provide strong, collective and urgent action to promote equitable rural economic development while slowing, halting and reversing deforestation and massively increasing forest restoration.

Several announcements were made at today’s session and at a Heads of States and Government session yesterday by partners of the LPAA, including:

New Commitments by Forest and Developed Countries to Increase Ambition to Act

Forest countries are developing national and sub-national plans and policies through which they will move from readiness efforts to concrete emission reduction programs, and governments have committed significant resources to incentivize and support action by forest countries to reduce deforestation.

• Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom announced a collective aim to provide over $5 billion from 2015 to 2020, if forest countries demonstrate measured, reported and verified emission reductions.
• Colombia in turn announced a commitment of $300 million with those same countries to deliver on its Amazon Vision and scale up its deforestation reduction efforts to the entire country.
• Mexico committed to expanding its initiative to reduce forest emissions to another 6 million ha in the country with international support, within a vision of scaling up its efforts to the rest of the country.
• Brazil: Brazil has delivered significant cuts in Amazon deforestation,over 70 percent in the last decade.  Building upon the results achieved to date, with the creation of the National REDD+ Commission and imminent approval of its REDD+ National Strategy, Brazil will be the first country to be ready for results-based payments.
• Paraguay is recovering and protecting 1 million ha of forests by 2030 working in partnership with Itaipu Binacional company and international support, with a potential reduction emissions reductions of 200 million tons of CO2e.
• Indonesia is tackling deforestation and forest degradation through improvement on forest governance, transparency, and stakeholder participation.
• Democratic Republic of Congo is creating a REDD+ strategy.
• Liberia has a long-standing commitment through the 4C’s strategy that integrates community, commercial, conservation and carbon storage services of forest.
• Landscape Restoration: Landscape Restoration commitments by national and subnational governments under the Bonn Challenge initiative expects to have a minimum of 5 million hectares under restoration and additional commitments for another 60 million hectares.
• African and Latin American countries are making progress on land restoration and the 20x20 initiative (20 million hectares by 2020).
• Latin American Protected Areas Declaration: 16 countries have stressed the key role of protected areas for adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change and climate change mitigation. They call for increased international support for the effective and sustainable management of protected areas

For more Information, please consult the following link: Partnerships, Progress to Protect & Restore Forests