environmental Protection
Fight against deforestation: climate protectors call for an agreement
In Brazil, deforestation in the Amazon continues on a large scale. Photo: Andre Penner/AP/dpa
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Forests are a habitat for three quarters of all bird species and a good two thirds of all mammal species – but humans are destroying more and more of them. Climate protectionists are waiting for concrete action.
A hundred days after the initiative of more than 140 countries at the world climate conference to stop deforestation by 2030, environmentalists are calling for the declaration to be secured quickly with a binding contract.
There was already a similar agreement in 2014, but the destruction of the forest continued, said Susanne Winter, forest expert for the environmental organization WWF, the German Press Agency in Berlin. “The Glasgow Declaration now faces a similar fate. It must therefore be quickly secured with binding agreements.”
Winter complained that the text published in Scotland on November 2 contained too few concrete steps – for example on how the species-rich natural forests, which also store a particularly large amount of greenhouse gases that are harmful to the climate, should be protected. Instead, the focus is on forest growth, which also includes fast-growing timber plantations. However, the WWF identified these timber plantations as the fourth strongest driver of forest destruction. “In addition, they are often worthless for species protection,” summed up the expert.
Binding pact to stop deforestation necessary
Winter said the example of Brazil shows how urgent a binding pact to stop deforestation is. The government there has just massively cut the budget of the environmental agency for fighting forest fires. “This is in direct contradiction to the Glasgow Declaration, which Brazil also signed.”
Winter called for improvements to be made to the EU Commission’s legislative proposal to soon ban imports of goods that were produced by destroying forests. The draft points in the right direction, but still has crucial weaknesses. “Many ecosystems such as savannah forests, grasslands, wetlands and moorland or mangroves are initially not to be included, which means that a large part of the destruction of nature is not stopped by the law or is shifted to other areas,” she complained. In addition, many important products have not yet been recorded – including, for example, rubber, corn, numerous wood products or steel. In addition to effective controls, it is particularly important that violations can be prosecuted in court quickly. There is still a problem with the draft.
The project is threatened with a fate similar to that of the timber trade regulation EUTR, said Winter. “It has been supposed to stop the import of illegal wood products since 2013, but it fails miserably because there are hardly any controls and only silly penalties are imposed for proven violations.”