Land conservation steps into limelight as key climate change fix

(Eco Business, 17 Sep 2018) The way land is used for food production and forestry accounts for about a quarter of planet-warming emissions.

From US states to retail giant Walmart, governments and businesses pledged to protect natural lands that help brake global warming at an international climate summit this week.

Important ecosystems like Brazil’s Cerrado savanna and Malaysia’s Borneo rainforest also got a boost from donors allocating new money for their conservation.

Cutting down trees to grow crops or for timber, and other uses of land for food production and forestry, contribute about a quarter of global climate-changing emissions each year.

But efforts to keep peatlands, forests, mangroves and other vegetation intact receive only 3 per cent of global climate finance, according to conservation group WWF.

“Land has emerged as a priority topic,” WWF’s climate lead Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, former Peruvian environment minister, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the meeting.

At the Global Climate Action Summit, which ends Friday, 17 US states pledged to measure the carbon storage capacity of their forests, and incorporate land conservation into their greenhouse gas reduction plans by 2020.

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Eco Business, 17 Sep 2018: Land conservation steps into limelight as key climate change fix