The UN’s Durban conference on climate change failed to make enough headway to curb deforestation,experts warned.
And they stressed that forest preservation plays a central role in the global warming debate.
Deforestation, which releases large quantities of CO₂ when forests are destroyed, represents around 17 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
That’s more than the total global emissions from transport.
After 14 days of marathon talks in the South African city, the conference approved a roadmap towards an accord that for the first time will bring all major greenhouse-gas emitters under a single legal roof.
“Durban has failed to deliver progress on fundamental issues like social and environmental safeguards, and on strict rules to ensure that global deforestation is reduced,” said Lars Lovold, head of Norway’s Rain-forest foundation.
One of the main decisions taken at the 2010 Cancun climate conference in Mexico was to include forests in the fight against climate change through a UN mechanism called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.
Known as REDD+, it aims to secure financial and technical support to help curb deforestation in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Brazil and Guatemala.
It also includes a role for conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
The deforestisation issue is particularly acute in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, dubbed the lungs of the earth.
Protected areas of the Amazon in Brazil cover more than 2.1 million square kilometres and the government’s environmental protection agency IBAMA is playing a key role in deterring deforestation.
And experts believe that 40 to 60 per cent of the timber extracted from the Amazon is illegal, compared with more than 80 percent 10 years ago.
In 2009, Amazon lumber represented a $2.5 billion market, according to a study by the Imazon institute and the Brazilian forestry agency.
But Durban made only modest headway on REDD+, opening the way to a future carbon market and stressing the need for rules to guarantee emission curbs and protect indigenous communuties and biodiversity.
“We do not have progress on the politics behind the money and without this we cannot talk about sustainability of REDD,” said Louis Verchot, a scientist at the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research.
“All of the global analyses shows that we have to have reductions in emissions from the forests fairly soon or else we cannot meet the 2050 goal of keeping climate-temperature increasing more than two degrees Celsius.”
Deforestation destroys more than seven million hectares every year in the world’s main forests where more than one billion people live.
As scientists slammed increasing deforestation rates in Africa, Rachel Kyte, vice president of the Sustainable Development Network at the World Bank, said: “Forests cannot be sustained if people are hungry.”
Mr Verchot added: “Countries where action on deforestation is required are Brazil and Indonesia.”
“Together these countries account for more than 70 per cent of the deforestation emissions.”
In Latin America, Mr Verchot cited some progress in Central America, but said more was needed there as well as in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia.