Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 28 May 08;
Ministers from nearly 60 nations pledged Wednesday on the sidelines of a UN biodiversity conference to support a global effort to halt deforestation by 2020.
Top environment officials from every continent literally lined up to make the pledge, organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a highly influential environmental protection group.
"Wildly successful" is how WWF International's director general James Leape described the event, even as more ministers straggled in after the deadline. "We expected 20 countries, but we got more than 50," he told AFP.
Deforestation has emerged as one of the most pressing -- and contentious -- issues at the United Nation's Conference on Biodiversity, a two-week conclave in Bonn of more than 6,000 representatives from 191 countries.
The world's primary forests, especially in the tropics, are the richest repositories of plant and animal species anywhere on land.
They also soak up at least 20 percent of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide -- acting as an essential sponge for the greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet.
Every year more than 30 million hectares (74 million acres) of forest are lost to largely illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture, but agreement on how to halt the devastation has proved elusive.
On Wednesday, several heads of state and nearly 100 ministers arrived in Bonn for a three-day "high level" meeting to boost flagging negotiations on how best to craft a new global deal on preserving Earth's wildlife.
"The conservation of our forests is of primoridal importance," German Chancellor Andrea Merkel told the assembly Wednesday. "The forests are the natural habitats of many species and the world's lungs."
Merkel announced that Germany would give 500 million euros (785 million dollars) -- mainly for forest protection -- over the next four years, and an additional 500 million euros annually thereafter.
Leape said the WWF initiative was a way of "putting a boost behind this convention to conserve forests." The unexpected turnout of ministers showed "an eagerness to find a way to break through," he added.
All of a half-dozen signatories interviewed by AFP thought the goal of "zero net deforestation by 2020" -- ensuring that any forests felled would be replaced by new trees -- should be incorporated in the UN convention itself.
"This is critically important for a mountainous country like Nepal," said Krishna Pandel, head of the Himalayan nation's delegation. "When we lose forest, we not only lose biodiversity, but bring environmental disasters -- especially mudslides -- onto the poorest of the poor."
In Nigeria, said its environment minister Halima Alao, the main problem is the ravaging of forests for firewood for heating and cooking.
Some 40 million tonnes of firewood are burned every year, according to Kabiru Yammama, head of the National Forest Conservation Council. Nigeria will lose all of its remaining forests in the next 12 years if the rate of deforestation remains unchecked, he said.
Among the other signatories were EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas; Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity; and German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
A representative from Indonesia -- the world's third largest carbon emitter due to deforestation -- also signed the initiative.
