Buenos Aires, Argentina – WWF is challenging global leaders to back an ambitious target on stopping forest loss as a major element of efforts to avert the looming climate catastrophe.
In his keynote address at the XIIIth World Forestry Congress on Monday, WWF International’s Forests Director Rodney Taylor urged participants of the Congress, including government leaders, NGOs and businesses, to support a global target of zero net deforestation by 2020.
WWF is proposing a groundbreaking global benchmark for action on forests to avoid dangerous climate change and curb biodiversity loss.
Despite conservation efforts, deforestation continues at an alarming rate – 13 million hectares per year, or 36 football fields a minute. It generates almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and halting forest loss has been identified as one of the most cost-effective ways to keep the world out of the danger zone of runaway climate change.
Taylor said that zero net deforestation by 2020 is “a common target – one that sets the scale and urgency with which these threats need to be tackled to maintain the health of the planet.”
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