Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to end deforestation in Canada at the COP26 summit on Monday, Nov. 2, 2021. Canada was just one of the 100+ countries that pledged for various causes at the COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow. In addition, countries like the United States, Russia, South Africa, and Britain agreed to various goals, including protecting Earth’s forests, cutting down on methane emissions, and encouraging coal-dependent countries to switch to renewable energy. 

The countries committed to ending deforestation by 2030 at the summit contain more than 85% of the world’s forests. One of those countries, South Africa, gets about 90% of its energy from coal-burning plants and will receive $8.5 billion in loans to solve its fossil fuel issues over the next few years. This is a critical factor to ending deforestation, as many countries from the 15% will likely follow in these countries’ footsteps. 

Forests are crucial to our way of life and absorb the #1 greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Global warming will accelerate if our deforestation issue isn’t solved soon. Earth will heat up quicker without as many trees to absorb the constant flow of carbon dioxide produced by many fossil-fuel-powered plants. The overall goal set in Paris 6 years ago was to keep global warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial temperature levels. 

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and various other companies, pledged to donate $2 billion towards the fight against climate change. “We must conserve what we have, restore what we’ve lost, and grow what we need in harmony with nature,” Bezos said. However, experts have said that past pledges for similar causes have been broken. Alison Hoare, a senior research fellow at political think tank Chatham House, said that some world leaders pledged the same goal in 2014, “but since then deforestation has accelerated across many countries.”