Forests

As I said in all the five presentations I made at COP20, forests of all kinds are essential to our future. The Amazon in particular is home to about a third of our planet's terrestrial life forms, cycles nearly a quarter of the Earth's freshwater, absorbs around 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year and plays a vital role in moderating the climate.

More than 1.6 billion people depend on forests for food, water, fuel, medicines, traditional cultures and livelihoods. Forests support up to 80% of biodiversity on earth and play a vital role in safeguarding the climate by naturally sequestering carbon.

Globally, deforestation accounts for up to 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, or roughly 5.8 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent released into the atmosphere, each year. This is more than global transport and aviation combined. According to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, reducing deforestation is the "single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions."

The organisation I founded and Chair, the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation (BJHRF) and I are committed to forest conservation. That is why, in 2012, I became IUCN Ambassador for the Bonn Challenge, the largest restoration initiative the world has ever seen. The objective of the Bonn Challenge is to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested land across the world by 2020. There are 2 billion hectares of degraded and deforested land across the world with potential for restoration. Restoring 150 million hectares would capture 47 Gigatonnes of CO2, and reduce the emissions gap by 17%. Forest restoration is invaluable in the race to tackle climate change.

Already more than 51 million hectares of land have been committed to the Bonn Challenge, from the following countries: United States, Rwanda, El Salvador, Costa Rica, the Brazilian Mata Atlantica Restoration Pact, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Niger, Colombia, Ethiopia and Guatemala.