. Manage better.BRUSSELS | ONLINE | 24 MARCH 2022
Manifesto
of the 2022 Global Forest SummitThe red flags are up2021 has been a pivotal year with regard to the world’s forests. Progress has been made these past few months: the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration and the
EU Forest Strategy were launched, as well as the Glasgow Compact during the COP 26 on climate and the Kew Declaration on reforestation. But in the meanwhile, deforestation has continued to rage. The Amazon even became a net CO2 emitter for the first time in 2021. This is alarming news that, once again, reminds us of the urgent need to address the challenges posed by forests. The revision in 2021 of New York Declaration on Forests (signed in 2014) that contained global targets aimed at tackling deforestation, restoring ecosystems and setting up a sustainable management of forests, demonstrated this urgency: all the intermediate objectives, set for 2020, were not met.
This is a wake-up call for the international community. Let’s take immediate emergency action2021 – 2030 are ten decisive years. This “decade of action”, as the UN Secretary General calls it, is the decade of all possible hopes and demands.
2030 sets a common horizon for two global forest policy frameworks. In addition to the New York Declaration on Forests, the United Nations Strategic Plan on Forests, adopted in 2017, sets the same time horizon. It brings together the member states of the UN Forum on Forests around six major objectives encapsulated in the « UN Global Forest Goals ».
As the twin crises of climate and biodiversity continue to deepen, forests must be placed at the top of the international agenda and receive our constant attention until 2030. But 2022 is a special year to move forward. It is the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference that gave birth to UNEP and the 30th anniversary of the Rio Summit that launched the three major UN environmental conventions. 2022 must capitalise on the progress made at the three COPs but also be able to face the bad news. We need to line up to see the achievement of the New York Declaration and the United Nations Global Forest Goals by 2030.
Setting a date each yearIn this context, the Global Forest Summit is the annual meeting to take stock of the situation of the world’s forests. Co-founded in 2021 by Reforest’Action and the Open Diplomacy Institute, the second edition of the Global Forest Summit will pursue the momentum initiated: bringing together the world’s forest stakeholders every year until 2030.
Our objective is to follow global forest trends in order to stay on top of them. We are basing our action on scientific data that document the fight against deforestation, forest restoration, sustainable management methods and the best way to finance all the efforts that are still to be made. We can no longer delay taking action, history demands it and future generations call on us. To achieve this, we need regular and precise monitoring that contains figures. The Global Forest Summit, born of civil society, will call for a global dashboard, based on existing initiatives, fed by constantly updated data to equip all those who want to take action quickly.
Ending deforestation as soon as possible, achieving quality restoration, increasing significantly the amount of land managed according to best practices, and making massive financial investments – those goals urge us to raise our ambitions and accelerate our actions.
This international Summit is an independent, multi-stakeholder initiative that focuses on implementing international goals, by bringing to the forefront multilateral organisations, the scientific community, businesses, NGOs and indigenous communities who can inspire others with their determination and impact on the ground.
Co-founded byReforest’Action is a B Corp certified company whose mission is to preserve and restore the world’s forests in response to the twin crisis of climate and biodiversity.The Open Diplomacy Institute is a French think-tank working on global governance of sustainability. It aims at accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
BRUSSELS | ONLINE | 24 MARCH 2022