We don’t yet know how much forest loss occurred in 2021, but deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 22% for the year ended July 31, 2021, according to Brazil’s national space research institute INPE.
These various meetings resulted in plenty of platitudes about the need to protect forests as part of climate change mitigation efforts but no legally-binding, time-bound agreements to end deforestation.
Arguably the highest profile forest-related pledge to emerge was the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which has now been signed by 141 countries that account for more than 90% of global forest cover, or 3.7 billion hectares.
Glasgow Declaration signatories committed to “working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation” but is voluntary.
and Norwegian governments, working with private companies, launched the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance coalition to accelerate payments to tropical countries for reducing deforestation.
LEAF’s billion dollars was part of $19.2 billion in forest-related financial pledges announced at the meeting.
Materials needed to power the renewable energy transition and booming demand for tech products didn’t escape scrutiny: Investigations revealed the dark side of the production of cobalt, nickel, gold, and other metals and minerals.
Activists and journalists also increasingly put a spotlight on the banks, investors, and fund managers who are financing deforestation.
and FLEG-T in the European Union have long barred commodities produced illegally, some of the newly proposed rules would apply to products associated with legal deforestation.
And it wasn’t only governments taking action to limit deforestation from their supply chains.
But the enthusiasm was tempered to a degree by a spate of warnings about the potentially adverse effects of poorly conceived tree planting initiatives as well as revelations that the tree planting sector is dogged by plenty of problematic behavior, from outright scams to projects that greatly overstate their actual impact.
The forest carbon market entered into another boom cycle, with carbon prices rising sharply as a range of companies scrambled to make progress toward achieving their newly established “net zero” emission targets.
Recognition of the contributions Indigenous peoples and local communities make toward maintaining healthy and productive ecosystems continued to grow in 2021, with more large conservation organizations joining calls for climate change mitigation measures that include securing and strengthening communities’ land and resource rights.
But the lead author of that report said afterward that the share is actually significantly smaller than 1% if one counts only money that went to projects that specifically included an IPLC organization.
The Peoples Forest Partnership, a coalition of organizations and investors that formed this year, put forth a plan to mobilize $20 billion per year by 2030 in direct funding for Indigenous forest conservation projects.
A Global Witness report released in September confirmed what the environmental community already suspected: 2020 was the worst year on record in terms of killings of environmental defenders.
Several studies published in prominent journals this year documented the diminishing capacity of tropical forests to function as carbon sinks due to deforestation, degradation, and the effects of climate change.
Brazil: As noted above, according to INPE, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 22% for the year ended July 31, 2021 relative to the prior year.
In 2021, the Bolsonaro administration continued to lay the groundwork for deforestation to increase in the future by taking more steps to legalize deforestation, turning a blind eye to illegal logging and land invasions, curbing environmental law enforcement, and taking aim at critics of its environmental policies.
On a positive front from an environmental standpoint, Colombia pledged to declare 30% of its territory as “protected” by 2020–eight years ahead of what many other countries have as a target under the 30×30 initiative.
Peru also received more than $400 million in commitments from the governments of the U.S., Britain, Germany, and Norway to protect forests.
It’s also a region where deforestation is on the rise, forests experiencing a drying trend, and there are big plans for infrastructure development and investments in extractive industries.
In short, the region attracted significant new financial pledges for forest conservation, while a tug-of-war over the fate of the massive peatlands that straddle Republic of Congo and the DRC continued between interests who want to exploit the area for oil extraction and timber production versus those who wish to maintain the integrity of the wetland, which stores more than 30 billion metric tons of carbon.
Over the past five years no country has seen its rate of primary forest loss decline as much as Indonesia.
Other examples: a report from a coalition of NGOs found that pulp and paper giants APP and APRIL have continued to plant on degraded peatlands inside their concessions, despite requirements to protect and restore these ecosystems, while Indonesia’s highest court upheld a ruling that declared a palm oil company not responsible for fires that occurred on peatlands it had drained within its concession.
The central government continued to move forward with plans to build and fortify roads across the region, potentially opening up more of its forests to logging, plantations, mining, and colonization, including Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In March, the government signed a new decree which granted 127,000 hectares to the Koh Kong provincial administration, prompting concerns that the forest-rich area would be deforested.
The system, known as Radar for Detecting Deforestation alerts, uses radar data that can also penetrate smoke and haze, providing insight on forest loss that is occurring in areas that are otherwise shrouded.