Financing the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of forests.
Here in Glasgow at COP26, we announce our intention to collectively provide US$12 billion for forest-related climate finance between 2021-2025. This will incentivise results and support action in Official Development Assistance (ODA) eligible forest countries where increased ambition and concrete steps are shown towards ending deforestation by no later than 2030.
2. Our collective finance pledge demonstrates ambitious global action to help unleash the potential of forests and sustainable land use. This is essential to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, including accelerating our pursuit of efforts to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5C. More ambitious action on nature is key for the shift toward the low carbon and climate resilient future we want. Through enhanced collaboration to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, we are minimising the dangerous economic and social impacts that climate change will bring. Success in protecting, restoring, and sustainably managing forests is also critical for protecting people and livelihoods, preserving critical ecosystems, and halting and reversing biodiversity loss.
3. Progress can only be made with ambitious forest countries in the lead. We welcome the leadership and ambition already shown by forest countries, indigenous peoples, local communities, and others, including the ambitious corporate commitments made by those here today. We also recognise that forest countries need access to significant, predictable flows of both public and private finance to deliver on this ambition and to help them tackle the systemic drivers of forest loss. Our intention to collectively provide US$12 billion of public climate finance for the period 2021-25 will support further ambition from forest countries, strengthening areas where we have already seen success, and enhancing new and underdeveloped actions. We will work closely with the private sector, using our public climate finance to leverage vital funding from private sources to deliver change at scale.
4. Central to the activities supported by the pledge we will promote the full, effective, and willing participation of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in programmes that protect and restore forests, reduce deforestation and forest degradation, and ensure that benefits reach smallholders and local communities.
5. Our pledge will provide support for climate mitigation and adaptation, help address the systemic drivers of forest loss, and enable the conservation, sustainable management, and restoration of forests in ODA eligible countries. These will be delivered through funding for results-based payments, technical and financial cooperation for capacity building, as well as other activities that support and strengthen:
- Forest and land governance and clarifying land tenure and forest rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities
- Deforestation-free and sustainable agricultural supply chains including systems for transparency, traceability and integrity, the development and effective implementation of sustainability standards and certification and increasing the availability of finance for smallholders and community forestry, to improve livelihoods and support a transition to sustainable practices
- Deforestation-free and sustainable financial markets and leveraging significant private investment in sustainable forest management, forest protection and sustainable deforestation free agriculture
- Large-scale landscape restoration and forest conservation
- Actions to reduce forest crime and forest fires
Supported by: Canada
European Commission on behalf of the European Union
Federal Republic of Germany
French Republic
Japan
Kingdom of Belgium
Kingdom of Denmark
Kingdom of the Netherlands
Kingdom of Norway
Republic of Korea
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
United States of America