COP26: More than 100 countries commit to ending and reversing deforestation by 2030

Nations including Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will sign the historic pledge, which is the first major deal to come from the summit.

More than 100 leaders representing 85% of the world’s forests will commit to stopping and reversing deforestation by 2030 in a “significant breakthrough” on the road to tackling the climate crisis.

Countries including Brazil, Russia, Canada, Colombia, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will sign the pledge on Tuesday, which is backed by £14bn ($19.2bn) in public and private funding.

Environment Secretary George Eustice hailed the pledge as a “major step forward” and told Sky News the deforestation deal offered greater hope of the two-week COP26 summit ending in wider action by nations.

Previously, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other cabinet ministers had been downbeat about the chances of the Glasgow conference ending with substantial action.

But speaking to Sky News on the second day of COP26, Mr Eustice said: “I think it’s a really encouraging sign that this early on… actually many of those countries have come forward and said ‘we’re up for doing this’.”

“This is a really significant breakthrough,” he added.

Image:Forests absorb vast amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide

The prime minister has been hoping the summit would deliver on priority areas he sees as “coal, cash, cars and trees,” so this pledge will tick the trees box.

But the government as host has set the conference’s aim to “keep 1.5 degrees alive” and there is still a long way to go on a deal to make the necessary emissions cuts.

Announcing the “landmark agreement” on forests at COP26 on Tuesday, Mr Johnson will say: “These great teeming ecosystems… are the lungs of our planet [and] … essential to our very survival.

“With today’s unprecedented pledges, we will have a chance to end humanity’s long history as nature’s conqueror, and instead become its custodian.”

Forests play an essential role in fighting the climate crisis, absorbing vast amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide from the air, and provide food, jobs and homes.

But campaigners say they are being lost at an alarming rate of one football pitch every two seconds through activities such as commodities, agriculture, urbanization, wildfire and forestry.

The new money behind the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use will help restore degraded land, tackle wildfires and support the rights of indigenous communities.

Many welcomed the acknowledgement of indigenous peoples as crucial guardians of forests.

Tuntiak Katan, coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, representing communities from the rainforests of Africa, Latin America and Indonesia, said the announcement raised the visibility of indigenous peoples and local communities as a climate solution to an “unprecedented level”.

COP26 day 1: Protests, highlights and stumbles

Roberto Waack, Brazilian business leader and biologist and a Chatham House visiting fellow, called the deal a “significant milestone”.

“Today we celebrate – tomorrow we will start pressing for the deal to be delivered,” he said.

CEOs from more than 30 financial institutions will also promise to stop investing in activities linked to deforestation.

The last similar pledge, the New York Declaration on Forests, signed in 2014, promised to halve tropical deforestation and restore 150 million hectares of land by 2020.

However, most countries did not follow through, and since then tropical primary forest loss has generally increased, according to a progress report published in October.

To harness the potential of forests to help the world meet the Paris temperature goal, dramatic shifts in food production, agriculture and land use will be needed.

This is the first major announcement unveiled at the UN climate talks, which aim to “keep alive” the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5C. Another is expected soon on cutting methane, a climate-heating gas.

World leaders delivered statements on their own plans to meet the Paris Agreement, with further speeches expected on Tuesday from the leaders of Pakistan, Argentina, Colombia and Japan.

They will provide the tone and guidance for the negotiators seeking to thrash out deals in the rest of the two-week summit.

President Biden said in his speech on Monday that those “responsible for much of the deforestation and all of the problems we have so far” have “overwhelming obligations” to the poorer nations that account for few of the emissions yet are paying a price as the planet has grown hotter.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, said his country would aim to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2070 – two decades after the US and the UK – and at least 10 years later than China.

The full list of signatories to the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forest and Land Use (as of 1 November 2021) are:

Albania, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote D’Ivoire, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, European Union, Ecuador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Congo, Romania, Russia, Saint Lucia, Samoa, San Marino, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Tanzania, Togo, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Uruguay, United Kingdom, United States of America, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

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Ethiopians told to protect capital against rebels

State media in Ethiopia say the authorities in Addis Ababa are urging residents to register their private weapons within the next two days.

This follows comments by a rebel alliance that it was considering marching on to the Ethiopian capital.

The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, the TPLF – which has been fighting government forces for the past year – has now linked up with fighters from an Oromo force – giving the rebels a major boost in their ability to threaten Addis Ababa.

A TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda told the BBC the alliance had already joined up north of the capital.

Rebel advances have sparked a national call to arms by Ethiopia’s prime minister and there’s a state of emergency in the Amhara and Oromia region.

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Explosions and gunfire heard at Kabul military hospital

The Afghan capital Kabul has been rocked by two explosions and gunfire at the site of a military hospital.

A Taliban spokesman said the first blast happened in front of the 400-bed Sardar Dawood Khan hospital and the second was nearby.

The spokesman said there had been casualties but did not give numbers. An eyewitness told the BBC there was fighting inside the hospital grounds.

Unconfirmed reports said at least 15 people had been killed.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts, but Afghanistan’s Bakhtar news agency quoted witnesses as saying a number of fighters from the Islamic State group had entered the hospital and clashed with security forces.

A doctor told AFP news agency he had been sent to seek shelter in a safe room.

“I can still hear gun firing inside the hospital building. I think the attackers are going from room to room,” he said.

Photographs and video footage from Kabul recorded a plume of smoke over the area and the sound of gunfire.

Image caption,Smoke rises near the military hospital after an apparent double bombing on Tuesday

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August, as the US withdrew its final troops after 20 years of conflict. A local affiliate of the Islamic State group known as Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K, has since launched sporadic attacks targeting civilians and Taliban fighters.

A bombing by the group at Kabul international airport in August killed more than 150 civilians and 13 US soldiers.

The Sardar Daud Khan hospital has been targeted before. More than 30 people were killed and 50 others wounded in 2017 when gunmen dressed as doctors stormed the building. That attack was also claimed by the Islamic State group.

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US to stop methane leaks from oil and gas wells

The US is set to announce measures to prevent millions of tonnes of the greenhouse gas methane from entering the atmosphere.

The measures will target methane leaking from oil and gas rigs across the US.

It is one of the most potent greenhouse gases and responsible for a third of current warming from human activities.

A global partnership to cut methane is to be announced at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow on Tuesday.

Dozens of countries have joined the initiative led by the US and the EU to cut emissions of the gas by at least 30% by 2030, compared with 2020 levels. However, China, Russia and India – some of the world’s top methane emitters – are not among them.

• Curbing methane emissions will ‘buy us time’

The main focus of efforts to curb global warming has for decades been carbon dioxide (CO2), emitted as a result of human activities such as generating power and clearing forests.

But there has been a growing focus on methane which warms the atmosphere faster than CO2.

What action is the Biden administration proposing?

Mr Biden will announce his plan at the conference in Glasgow, where countries are trying to hammer out plans to limit global warming in order to avoid a climate catastrophe by the end of this century.

In the US, the oil and gas industry is the largest industrial source of methane emissions, responsible for approximately 30% of total emissions of the gas, the White House says.

Under the Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose new regulations that will broaden and strengthen methane emissions reduction for new oil and gas facilities.

But it will also propose regulations to require states develop plans that will reduce methane emissions from existing sources across America, including some 300,000 oil and gas well sites.

An “aggressive” programme would plug abandoned orphan oil and gas wells, including many that are still venting methane.

There would be new safety regulations to tighten requirements over methane leaks from the country’s 3m miles (4.8m km) of pipelines, and the burning of methane waste at drilling sites on public land would be curbed.

One way to reduce methane emissions from agriculture would be through “alternative manure management systems”, the White House says.

“The timing of this is critical,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told Reuters news agency.

“As we speak, world leaders are gathering right now in Glasgow and they are looking to the United States for true leadership. This proposal is absolutely bold, aggressive and comprehensive.”

According to Reuters, the new rules are most likely to take effect in 2023.

How have environmentalists and business responded?

President Biden’s plan was welcomed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a US-based non-governmental organisation which advocates for the environment.

“This step is critical to meet President Biden’s pledge to cut America’s climate pollution in half by 2030,” said senior strategic director David Doniger.

“This EPA action will also bolster the growing international efforts – led by the United States and the European Union – to significantly reduce methane pollution at the global climate talks in Glasgow.”

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry’s top lobbying group, has said it supports direct regulation of methane emissions from new and existing sources but opposes efforts in Congress to impose fees on methane leaks, calling them punitive and unnecessary.

It argues that leaks of methane have decreased even as natural gas production has gone up as a result of the ongoing fracking boom, and says technological advancements in recent years have made finding and repairing natural gas leaks cheaper and easier, the Associated Press reports.

“Thanks to innovation and industry actions, U.S. methane emissions rates in the largest producing regions have declined 70 percent in the past decade, even as America produces more affordable, reliable and cleaner natural gas,” the API says.

How is methane emitted?

Around 40% of CH4 comes from natural sources such as wetlands but the bigger share now comes from a range of human activities, ranging from agriculture such as cattle and rice production to rubbish dumps.

One of the biggest sources is from the production, transport and use of natural gas and since 2008 there has been a big spike in methane emissions, which researchers believe is linked to the boom in fracking for gas in parts of the US.

In 2019, methane in the atmosphere reached record levels, around two-and-a-half times above what they were in the pre-industrial era.

What worries scientists is that methane has real muscle when it comes to heating the planet. Over a 100-year period it is 28-34 times as warming as CO2.

Over a 20-year period it is around 84 times as powerful per unit of mass as carbon dioxide.

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Daughters are for sale

She was sold to a stranger so her family could eat as Afghanistan crumbles

(CNN)Parwana Malik, a 9-year-old girl with dark eyes and rosy cheeks, giggles with her friends as they play jump rope in a dusty clearing.

But Parwana’s laughter disappears as she returns home, a small hut with dirt walls, where she’s reminded of her fate: she’s being sold to a stranger as a child bride.

The man who wants to buy Parwana says he’s 55, but to her, he’s “an old man” with white eyebrows and a thick white beard, she told CNN on October 22. She worries he will beat her and force her to work in his house.

Parwana, 9, wearing pink, plays with friends in the displacement camp on the outskirts of Qala-e-Naw, in Afghanistan’s Badghis province. Credit: CNN

But her parents say they have no choice.

For four years, her family have lived in an Afghan displacement camp in northwestern Badghis province, surviving on humanitarian aid and menial work earning a few dollars a day. But life has only gotten harder since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan on August 15.

As international aid dries up and the country’s economy collapses, they’re unable to afford basic necessities like food. Her father already sold her 12-year-old sister several months ago.

A camp for internally displaced people in Qala-i-Naw, Badghis province, Afghanistan, on October 17.

Parwana is one of many young Afghan girls sold into marriage as the country’s humanitarian crisis deepens. Hunger has pushed some families to make heartbreaking decisions, especially as the brutal winter approaches.

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The parents gave CNN full access and permission to speak to the children and show their faces, because they say they cannot change the practice themselves.

“Day by day, the numbers are increasing of families selling their children,” said Mohammad Naiem Nazem, a human rights activist in Badghis. “Lack of food, lack of work, the families feel they have to do this.”

An impossible choice

Abdul Malik, Parwana’s father, can’t sleep at night. Ahead of the sale, he told CNN he’s “broken” with guilt, shame and worry.

He had tried to avoid selling her — he traveled to the provincial capital city Qala-e-Naw to search unsuccessfully for work, even borrowing “lots of money” from relatives, and his wife resorted to begging other camp residents for food.

But he felt he had no choice if he wants to feed his family.

“We are eight family members,” he told CNN. “I have to sell to keep other family members alive.”

Parwana Malik, 9, and her father Abdul, in their home at a camp for internally displaced people in Afghanistan’s Badghis province.

The money from Parwana’s sale will only sustain the family for a few months, before Malik has to find another solution, he said.

Parwana said she hoped to change her parents’ minds — she had dreams of becoming a teacher, and didn’t want to give up her education. But her pleas were futile.

On October 24, Qorban, the buyer, who only has one name, arrived at her home and handed 200,000 Afghanis (about $2,200) in the form of sheep, land and cash to Parwana’s father.

“This is your bride. Please take care of her … please don’t beat her”Abdul MalikParwana’s father

Qorban didn’t describe the sale as a marriage, saying he already had a wife who would look after Parwana as if she were one of their own children.

“(Parwana) was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money,” Qorban said. “She will be working in my home. I won’t beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind.”

Parwana, dressed in a black head covering with a colorful floral garland around her neck, hid her face and whimpered as her weeping father told Qorban: “This is your bride. Please take care of her — you are responsible for her now, please don’t beat her.”

Qorban agreed, then gripped Parwana’s arm and led her out the door. As they left, her father watching by the doorway, Parwana dug her feet into the dirt and tried to pull away — but it was no use. She was dragged to the waiting car, which slowly pulled away.

‘Absolutely cataclysmic’

Since the Taliban’s takeover, stories like Parwana’s have been on the rise.

Though marrying off children under 15 is illegal nationwide, it has been commonly practiced for years, especially in more rural parts of Afghanistan. And it has only spread since August, driven by widespread hunger and desperation.

More than half the population is facing acute food insecurity, according to a United Nations report released this week. And more than 3 million children under age 5 face acute malnutrition in the coming months. All the while, food prices are soaring, banks are running out of money and workers are going unpaid.

Nearly 677,000 people have been displaced this year due to fighting, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Many of them live in tents and huts in internal displacement camps like Parwana’s family.

Men sitting at a camp for internally displaecd people in Qala-i-Naw, Badghis province, on October 17.

“It’s absolutely cataclysmic,” said Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch. “We don’t have months or weeks to stem this emergency … we are in the emergency already.”

The problem is particularly acute for Afghan girls, who have stayed home and watched their brothers return to secondary school since the Taliban takeover. The Taliban said it is working on a plan to allow girls to return too, but have not said when that could happen or what conditions may be imposed.

The uncertainty combined with rising poverty has pushed many girls into the marriage market.

“As long as a girl is in school, her family is invested in her future,” said Barr, from Human Rights Watch. “As soon as a girl falls out of education, then suddenly it becomes much more likely that she’s going to be married off.”

And once a girl is sold as a bride, her chances of continuing an education or pursuing an independent path are close to zero.

Instead, she faces a much darker future. Without access to contraception or reproductive health services, nearly 10% of Afghan girls aged 15 to 19 give birth every year, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

Many are too young to be able to consent to sex and face complications in childbirth due to their underdeveloped bodies — pregnancy-related mortality rates for girls aged 15 to 19 are more than double the rate for women aged 20 to 24, according to UNFPA.

‘I don’t want to leave my parents’

Magul, a 10-year-old girl in neighboring Ghor province, cries every day as she prepares to be sold to a 70-year-old man to settle her family’s debts. Her parents had borrowed 200,000 Afghanis ($2,200) from a neighbor in their village — but without a job or savings, they have no way of returning the money.

The buyer had dragged Magul’s father, Ibrahim, to a Taliban prison and threatened to have him jailed for failing to repay his debt. Ibrahim, who only goes by one name, said he promised the buyer he would pay in a month. But now time is up.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ibrahim said. “Even if I don’t give him my daughters, he will take them.”

Magul washes her family’s dishes outside their home in Afghanistan’s Ghor province. Credit: CNN

Magul’s mother, Gul Afroz, feels just as helpless. “I’m praying to God these bad days pass,” she said.

Like Qorban, the buyer claimed he would not mistreat Magul and that she would simply help with cooking and cleaning at his home. But the reassurances ring hollow in the face of his threats against Magul’s family.

“I really don’t want him. If they make me go, I will kill myself,” Magul said, sobbing as she sat on the floor of her home. “I don’t want to leave my parents.”

It’s a similar situation for a nine-member family in Ghor province that is selling two daughters aged 4 and 9. The father has no job, like most in the displacement camp — but he faces even tougher odds with a disability.

He is prepared to sell the girls for 100,000 Afghanis (about $1,100) each. Zaiton, the 4-year-old, with wispy bangs and large brown eyes, said she knows why this is happening: “Because we are a poor family and we don’t have food to eat.”

Their grandmother, Rokhshana, is distraught.

“If we have food and there is someone to help us, we would never do this,” Rokhshana said through tears. “We don’t have any choice.”

Zaiton, 4, plays with her brother at their home in Ghor province, Afghanistan.

International funding dried up

Local Taliban leaders in Badghis say they plan to distribute food to stop families selling their daughters. “Once we implement this plan, if they continue to sell their kids we will put them in jail,” said Mawlawai Jalaludin, a spokesperson from the Taliban’s Justice Department, without elaborating.

But the problem stretches beyond just Badghis. And as winter approaches, both the Taliban and humanitarian groups are pleading for more aid, hoping it could stem the rise in child marriages.

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan as the United States and its allies withdrew prompted the international community to halt development assistance — money that had been vital in propping up the country’s economy and key services.

Taliban fighters on a pick-up truck along a road in Band Sabzak area in Badghis province, Afghanistan, on October 17.

Countries and multilateral institutions have been reluctant to renew pledges for fear of appearing to legitimize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s leaders.

With the country’s economy close to collapse, UN donors pledged more than $1 billion in humanitarian aid in September, of which $606 million would meet Afghans’ most pressing needs. But less than half those pledged funds have been received, with some member states who have not yet paid, according to a UNOCHA spokesperson.

Several of the families and experts CNN spoke with expressed frustration at the shortage of aid during the country’s direst hour.

More than $1 billion in aid pledged for Afghanistan as country faces ‘most perilous hour’

Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, head of office at UNOCHA, emphasized that humanitarian aid workers were still on the ground, providing relief and supporting hospitals — but it’s not enough.

“By not releasing the (development) funds that they are holding from the Taliban government, it’s the vulnerable, it’s the poor, it’s these young girls who are suffering,” Carlsen said.

Barr and Carlsen acknowledged the need for world leaders to hold the Taliban accountable for human rights violations — but they warned the longer Afghanistan goes without development assistance or injected liquidity, the more families face death by starvation, and the more girls are likely to be sold.

The Taliban has also appealed for aid. “The Taliban is asking aid agencies to come back to Afghanistan and help these people,” said one Taliban director of an internal displacement camp in Ghor province. “I’m requesting the international community and aid agencies, before the winter comes, to please come and help.”

Back in the Afghan displacement camp in Badghis province, Malik is under no illusions about what the sale means for his daughter — or what the grim situation means for his family’s future.

Qorban said he will use his daughter as a worker not a bride, but Malik knows he has no control over what happens to her now.

“The old man told me, ‘I’m paying for the girl. It’s none of your business what I’m doing with her … that’s my business,'” Malik told CNN.

The ominous warning weighs heavily on him as he considers the bleak days ahead. The cold is creeping in, and snow has already begun coating parts of the country. When the money from Parwana’s sale runs out, he will be back at square one — with three daughters and a son still at home to support.

“As I can see, we don’t have a future — our future is destroyed,” he said. “I will have to sell another daughter if my financial situation doesn’t improve — probably the 2-year-old.”

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