By Isabel Ovalle
DOHA: El Salvador and Costa Rica have committed to restore 1 million hectares of degraded and deforested land each. This pledge is part of a global movement called ‘Plant a Pledge’ that aims to restore 150 million hectares worldwide in the next 10 years.
In the context of the UN climate talks in Doha, Bianca Jagger, ‘Plant a Pledge’ Campaign Ambassador, said that the initiative was launched in Rio in 2012, and added that with Costa Rica and El Salvador, “the number has exceeded all expectations.”
This project has formal pledges of over 20 million hectares, a pre-pledge declaration of intent from India of 10 million, and another 20 million to come from the Meso American Alliance of Peoples and Forests, reaching 50 million hectares of commitments.
On this issue, Jagger stated that degraded and deforested land in the world is the size of South America. “If we do what’s necessary, we will see the difference not only in our time, but for our children and their future,” she added.
The Ambassador of ‘Plant a Pledge’ encouraged people to do what they can to prevent climate change catastrophes, adding that “restored land can be put to many uses.” To this end, she said that “we still need to persuade governments to achieve the challenge by 2020.”
Herman Rosa Chavez, Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources for El Salvador, said: “Our commitment to restore one million hectares - half the country’s territory - is a serious and desperate response to a changing climate that earned El Salvador the first and fourth places in Germanwatch´s Global Climate Risk Index in 2009 and 2011, respectively.”
“With adequate support, landscape restoration at this scale will also allow us to make an important contribution to climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, greatly enhancing our carbon sinks, improving livelihoods, ecosystem services and disaster resilience. Landscape restoration may be seen as a mitigation strategy, but for El Salvador it is an urgent and essential element for adaptation and reducing escalating climate related losses and damages,” insisted the Minister.
René Castro, Minister of Costa Rica, said that his country also has a high rate of degraded land, “now 52 percent of the territory has forest.” Nevertheless, “we want to increase it to approximately 140,000 hectares this year. “It’s tough, but we want to do it to protect biodiversity, plus it has an indirect impact on mitigation,” he concluded.
The Peninsula
