COP26: Malta among 100 countries promising to end deforestation by 2030

Malta is among more than 100 countries pledging to end and reverse deforestation by 2030, in the COP26 climate summit’s first major agreement.

The COP26 deal expected to be signed later today in Glasgow, includes Brazil, the home of the Amazon rainforest, where cutting down of trees has intensified over the past few years.

The pledge includes €16 billion of public and private funds.

Experts welcomed the move, but warned a previous deal in 2014 had “failed to slow deforestation at all”.

Cutting trees contributes to climate change because it depletes forests that absorb vast amounts of CO2, the gas that contributes to global warming.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the global meeting in Glasgow, will call Tuesday's deal a “landmark agreement to protect and restore the Earth's forests”.

Large tracts of forests are removed annually to make space for agriculture and grazing areas to feed the world.

Within the global context, Malta’s contribution may be insignificant but the pledge includes a commitment to “conserve forests and other terrestrial ecosystems and accelerate their restoration”.

Countries will also commit to “facilitate trade and development policies, internationally and domestically, that promote sustainable development, and sustainable commodity production and consumption”.

In Malta, tree cover is low and woodland cover is less than 5% of the area of the Maltese Islands, according to the State of the Environment report released in 2018 by the Environment and Resources Authority.

The report, which covered the period until 2015, noted that 67,000 trees were planted between 2008 and 2015 in various afforestation initiatives in various areas.

In the budget delivered earlier this month, government pledged a multi-million-euro investment to create a massive coastal woodland in the Inwadar Park between Żonqor Point in Marsaskala and Xgħajra.

But the country has also seen the loss of mature trees to make way for road-widening projects over the past four years with the roads agency making up for the loss by planting thousands of trees.

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