Several major pledges announced at COP26 will accelerate global efforts to end deforestation, signaling the growing importance of nature conservation in climate policy.
Today, President Biden announced a plan that would spend $9 billion through 2030 to conserve and restore U.S. forests, among hundreds of other world leaders. This plan comes amidst a wave of commitments to ending deforestation, including a pledge by top financial institutions to stop investment in companies with deforestation in their supply chains.
This pledge was supported by investors with over $8.7tn in assets under management, including Boston Common, Domini, Impax, and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust. As part of the commitment, signatories are adhering to the Deforestation-Free Finance Roadmap released this week by Global Canopy, designed to guide the implementation of these commitments in their portfolios.
“These pledges announced at COP26 will go a long way in our global efforts to end deforestation. We especially applaud the leadership shown by members of our Ceres Investor Network in spearheading this work,” said Julie Nash, director of food and forests at Ceres. “These are encouraging signs of a growing consensus around the role of intact forests in mitigating the climate crisis and limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
The actions recommended in the deforestation roadmap are complimentary of those in the Ceres Investor Guide to Deforestation and Climate Change, which was released last year as the first-of-its-kind guide for ending deforestation within portfolios.