More than a hundred countries have committed to halting and reversing deforestation and land degradation by 2030, backed by $19 billion in public and corporate financing to protect and restore forests.
The presidents of Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which accounts for 85% of the world's forests, approved the unified declaration published late Monday during the COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow.
According to a statement issued on behalf of the leaders by the British prime minister's office, the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forest and Land Use would embrace forests covering more than 33 million square kilometers (13 million square miles).
"We will have a chance to end humanity's long history of conquering nature and instead become its custodian," Boris Johnson said, describing the accord as "unprecedented."
On Tuesday, a host of the new government and corporate initiatives to achieve that goal was announced, including billions in promises for Indigenous forest guards and sustainable agriculture.
According to the non-profit World Resources Institute (WRI), forests absorb around 30% of carbon dioxide emissions. The forests remove the emissions from the atmosphere, preventing the climate from warming.
This natural climatic buffer, however, is fast dwindling. According to WRI's deforestation tracking effort Global Forest Watch, the world lost 258,000 square kilometers (99,600 square miles) of forest in 2020.
That's more than twice the size of the United Kingdom.
According to Michelle Passero, head of The Nature Conservancy's climate change program in California, the deal is a "terrific start."
"We need pledges like this to kick off COP26," she told Al Jazeera from her home in San Francisco. "This is a really good start. We also need to connect all the dots all the way to the ground, to engage communities and Indigenous communities in solutions."
The pact signed on Monday dramatically expands a similar pledge made by 40 countries in 2014 as part of the New York Declaration on Forests. It goes further than ever in laying out the resources needed to achieve that goal.
Twelve countries, including the United Kingdom, have agreed to pay 8.75 billion pounds ($12 billion) in public money to developing countries between 2021 and 2025 to support efforts to rehabilitate degraded land and combat wildfires.
More than 30 private sector investors, including Aviva, Schroders, and AXA, would contribute at least another 5.3 billion pounds ($7.2 billion).
By 2025, the investors, who represent $8.7 trillion in assets under management, have agreed to stop investing in deforestation-related industries.
On Tuesday, five governments, including the United Kingdom and the United States, and a group of international organizations donated $1.7 billion in funding to promote Indigenous peoples' forest conservation and land rights.
Indigenous populations, according to environmentalists, are the finest defenders of the forest, frequently defending it violently from loggers and land grabbers.
More than 30 financial organizations with a combined asset base of more than $8.7 trillion stated they will make "best efforts" by 2025 to prevent deforestation associated with livestock, palm oil, soy, and pulp production.
The goal of COP26 is to maintain the purpose of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels alive. Forests and so-called nature-based solutions, according to scientists, will be critical to achieving that aim.
According to the Biomass Carbon Monitor project, which is funded by data analytics firm Kayrros and French academic institutions, woodlands have eliminated roughly 760 million tonnes of carbon each year since 2011, offsetting nearly 8% of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement.
"For the time being, our biosphere is really helping bail us out," said Oliver Phillips, an ecologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. "However, there is no guarantee those processes will continue," he said.
