China among 100 nations to join UK in ‘unprecedented’ £14bn pledge to save world

Boris Johnson urged to 'ramp up' pressure on France by Tice

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In the first major agreement of the COP26 climate summit, world leaders have vowed to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. The pledge includes almost £14billion of public and private funds. Felling trees contributes to climate change because it depletes forests that absorb vast amounts of the warming gas CO2.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will call the deal a ” landmark agreement to protect and restore the Earth’s forests” later today.

He will add: “These great teeming ecosystems – these cathedrals of nature – are the lungs of our planet.”

Signees of the deal include the likes of China, Brazil and Russia, who have recently come under fire for their efforts to curb the climate crisis.

Environment Minister Lord Zac Goldsmith has dubbed the agreement as a “genuinely unprecedented package”.

He added: “People will be able to justify having hope [that the world’s forests can be saved].

“This puts us on a road to recovery and renewal.”

The countries who will sign the pledge cover around 85 percent of the world’s forests.

Lord Goldsmith said it had “not been easy” to persuade many of the countries involved to join.

He told the Guardian: “The different parts of the package are mutually reinforcing.

“We are sending a very serious signal to the markets, we have a good pledge from buyers.

“The market has been blind to the value of the environment.

“The [current economic] incentives to deforest are 40 times bigger than the incentives to keep healthy forests, so changing that is difficult.

“There are some surprising countries in there, and this is a pretty bullish pledge,” said the Conservative peer, though he declined to name any countries.

“We have managed to persuade some of the trickier customers to come on board.”

Some of the funding will go to developing countries to restore damaged land, tackle wildfires and support indigenous communities.

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Governments of 28 countries will also commit to remove deforestation from the global trade of food and other agricultural products such as palm oil, soya and cocoa.

More than 30 of the world’s biggest companies will commit to end investment in activities linked to deforestation.

And a £1.1billion fund will be established to protect the world’s second largest tropical rainforest – in the Congo Basin.

Professor Simon Lewis, an expert on climate and forests at University College London, said: “It is good news to have a political commitment to end deforestation from so many countries, and significant funding to move forward on that journey.”

But he told the BBC the world “has been here before” with a declaration in 2014 in New York “which failed to slow deforestation at all”.

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