Deforestation and degradation have big climate impacts. Land use change, the majority of which is deforestation, and forest degradation currently account for about 11 percent of total net human-made global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Gross emission levels for forest conversion and degradation are even higher. Curtailing this deforestation and degradation and restoring some of the world’s lost forests is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
This paper is a contribution to the FOLU 2019 report, Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use. The paper answers four questions:
- Why are forests critical to economic development and human well-being?
- What public sector measures could conserve and restore forests?
- Why haven’t these public measures sufficiently worked at scale yet?
- How can one overcome the economic and political economy barriers to these measures?