Posted on May, 19 2016

By Josefina Braña Varela and Karen Petersen, WWF Forest and Climate

On April 22, Earth Day, 175 countries signed the Paris Agreement, and 15 countries ratified it, moving the world closer to a more cooperative global climate agenda. The signing of the Paris Agreement is an important moment for reflection. The agreement itself is a remarkable demonstration of global collaboration and compromise, and the aspirations it contains provide a good foundation for the transformative work that lies ahead. What has been accomplished to date is a critical step, providing hope and a necessary anchor of commitment to confront climate change.

Of course, this moment of reflection cannot be a moment of repose. Even collectively, the national commitments outlined in Paris barely take us half way to limiting the global temperature increase to well under 2°C. In that scenario, if all conditional targets are met, a global temperature rise of at least 3°C is predicted, unless we act now to increase ambition.

In addition to transformational actions to phase out fossil fuels, forests must play a key role in our efforts to close the emissions gap. Indeed, it will be impossible to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C without addressing emissions from forests and repositioning them as global carbon sinks, in keeping with the environmental integrity of the climate regime. The formal inclusion of forests within the Agreement underscores the need for all parties to take action in the forest sector. We believe that action needs to start now.

It is encouraging that many countries have already indicated their intent to reduce emissions in the forest sector within their national commitments through a wide range of activities. Yet, reaching the full potential of the forest sector will require countries to set even more ambitious targets. They will also need to think more holistically about how they are going to fulfil those ambitions, by identifying goals that encompass the entire land sector and cross-sectoral interventions. 

The successful implementation of existing forest sector targets will also depend on a substantial increase in investments from donors. 

Similarly, the private sector must support these efforts with investments in deforestation-free supply chains, sustainable forest management, and reforestation and restoration efforts. As illustrated by commitments announced under the New York Declaration on Forests, and more recently during COP21, the private sector is becoming an increasingly willing partner in those efforts to transition to a deforestation free world. 

In Paris, countries agreed on collective goals and adopted an agreement that seeks high ambition, but the pathway to get there is uncertain. We need to connect all of those in the forefront of climate action, to better move towards the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. 

These connections need to be made through the Action Agenda, so it becomes a vehicle to catalyse the collaboration between developed and developing countries, and state and non-state actors. In the face of global climate change, efforts must not be made in isolation but in concert, to allow us to amplify our impact. We need to find ways to incentivize governments to do more, and to remove barriers to accomplishing the highest possible ambition. Given the joint actions of donor and forest countries, and the more recent engagement of the private sector in deforestation-free pledges, REDD+ constitutes a sound and important example of how these collaborative partnerships can work.

Discussions concerning the engagement of non-state actors in the implementation of the new climate regime and the continuation of the Action Agenda are already underway.  In the margins of the signing of the Paris Agreement in New York, during a high-level meeting regarding the Action Agenda, participants identified forests and land as a priority area as countries move forward in building the new climate regime, along with energy and finance.  These discussions have also identified the need to magnify the engagement from multiple stakeholders across sectors, establish criteria to ensure we are promoting the gold standard of climate action – big, transformative, accountable, inclusive, and science based actions – and create a system that allows us to assess and track progress to understand if our actions are making the difference or not. 

Any measure of success coming out of Paris will be dependent upon immediately increasing action in the forest sector, but forests cannot be an excuse for inaction in other sectors. Bolstering pre-2020 climate action is imperative for preventing the worst impacts of climate change and is the only way to achieve a least-cost scenario.

Once 55 countries representing 55% of emissions have signed and ratified the Agreement, it can enter into force – even before 2020. Speedy realization of the Paris Agreement would be a powerful symbol of the need to expedite ambitious climate action. But we cannot wait to act. Whenever it enters into force, the Paris Agreement should not preclude additional swift and increasingly ambitious climate action, but instead serves as a reminder of the work that is yet to be done and that must begin now.