One year after COP26, the fight against deforestation remains insufficient

A view of deforestation on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, August 5, 2010. REUTERS - Beawiharta Beawiharta

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A year after the Glasgow declaration, a study shows that the progress recorded in the fight against deforestation is too modest and the trajectory taken by the States, with rare exceptions, is not the right one.

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It was a year ago, during COP26 in Scotland.

One hundred and forty-five states pledged through the “Glasgow Declaration”

.

An essential condition to hope to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, but also to stop the erosion of biodiversity.

According to an assessment by Climate Focus, deforestation decreased by 6.3% last year.

Good news ?

Not really.

To achieve the objectives set and put an end to the phenomenon by 2030, deforestation would have to drop by 10% per year.

And each time this threshold is not reached, the efforts to be made the following year are all the more colossal.

Another problem, in tropical forests, which are also the greatest reservoirs of biodiversity, the decline in deforestation has only reached a small 3%.

Worse, in

, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Paraguay and Bolivia, deforestation has even increased.

The only positive note is that tropical Asia is on the right trajectory for 2030. Indonesia, for example, has seen a steady decline in deforestation over the past five years.

In Africa, some countries such as Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana or Tanzania are also good students in this area.

The last dark spot in this picture concerns the major global agricultural companies.

Only a quarter of them have announced a clear program to fight against deforestation.

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