COP26 today (Tuesday 2 November) saw a flurry of announcements on forests – among them a new agreement between governments, including Brazil, to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. But Greenpeace slammed the announcement as a green light for another decade of forest destruction.
Responding from Glasgow to the announcement, Greenpeace Brazil executive director Carolina Pasquali said: “There’s a very good reason Bolsonaro felt comfortable signing on to this new deal. It allows another decade of forest destruction and isn’t binding. Meanwhile the Amazon is already on the brink and can’t survive years more deforestation. Indigenous Peoples are calling for 80% of the Amazon to be protected by 2025, and they’re right, that’s what’s needed. The climate and the natural world can’t afford this deal.”
The ‘new’ deal in effect replaces the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests (although Brazil didn’t sign up then). The 2014 declaration included a commitment that governments halve forest loss by 2020 and support the corporate sector to end deforestation in supply chains by 2020 – and yet the rate of natural forest loss has dramatically increased in recent years. The new announcements on supply chains today appear to lack teeth and are unlikely to reverse the years of corporate failure on this issue.
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Posted On: 02/11/2021