Governments are far off track to meet a global target to end deforestation by 2030, according to a progress assessment. Experts say the report is a wake-up call ahead of COP30 next month, which will be the first UN climate summit held in the Amazon rainforest.
At COP26 in 2021, more than 140 countries adopted a pledge, known as the Forest Declaration, to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by the end of the decade. Two years later at COP28, all the world’s governments reaffirmed this commitment as part of the first global stocktake of national climate plans.
But on Tuesday, an annual review by NGOs and research institutions showed that, instead of advancing towards the goal, countries will have to close a widening gap in the next five years – as deforestation is 63% higher than where it needs to be to reach zero by 2030.
In 2024 alone, the world permanently lost an area of forests roughly the size of England – about 8.1 million hectares. To be on track to stop forest loss by 2030, no more than 5 million hectares should have been deforested globally in 2024, the report says.
“In order to reach zero deforestation by 2030, we would have to cut (forest loss) by 10% each year,” Erin Matson, lead author of the report and a senior consultant at Climate Focus, told journalists. “So far, we are failing to keep pace with that trajectory.”
The report shows that permanent deforestation occurred mostly in the tropics, where old-growth primary forests are being cleared at alarming rates. About 6.7 million hectares were lost in 2024, which released about 3.1 billion metric tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
Because of the long timescales over which such high-value forest ecosystems develop, Matson warned that “these carbon and biodiversity-rich forests will not recover in our lifetimes”.
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What is driving forest loss?
According to the Forest Declaration Assessment, the main driver for forest loss in the tropics across all regions is the expansion of agriculture, which results in primary forests being converted to permanent pastures or plantations.
A separate 2024 analysis by the World Resources Institute showed cattle has been the main commodity replacing rainforests in key biodiverse regions – including Brazil, which will host COP30 in November.
“Demand for commodities like soy, beef, timber, coal and metals keeps rising – but the tragedy is that we don’t actually need to destroy forests to meet that demand. There are more sustainable production models, but the incentives are completely backwards,” Matson said.
A 2024 report by NGO Global Canopy revealed that a quarter of the top companies and financial institutions exposed to deforestation in their supply chains did not have a policy to prevent forest loss from their activities.
Additionally, in Latin America, wildfires were responsible for a staggering 133% jump in forest loss from the previous year. Fuelled by severe drought, fires in 2024 consumed an area the size of California in the Brazilian Amazon alone – a 66% increase from 2023, according to MapBiomas.
“Major fire years used to be outliers but now they’re the norm. These fires are largely human-made. They’re linked to land clearing, to climate change-induced drought and to limited law enforcement,” Matson added.
Experts told Climate Home in August that the spike in wildfires could threaten forest conservation initiatives in Brazil, including carbon-offsetting projects and state-level forest protection projects in Pará, one of the Brazilian Amazon states with the highest deforestation rates where the COP will take place.
Amazon COP ‘crucial’ for action
As delegates from all countries prepare to gather in the city of Belém for the first UN climate summit held in the Amazon rainforest, experts told Climate Home that clear political signals to reverse the deforestation trend are desperately needed at the midpoint of the Forest Declaration decade.
“This COP30 is extremely crucial for us to move these pledges to actions,” said Sassan Saatchi, founder of the non-profit CTrees and a former NASA scientist.
“The nice thing about COP30 being in Belém is that there is a recognition that the Global South has really come forward to say: ‘We are going to solve the climate problem, even though we may not have been historically the cause of this climate change’,” Saatchi added.
Brazil pledges $1bn in first contribution to COP30 rainforest fund
Brazil has vowed to place rainforests at the centre of the upcoming climate conference, and has proposed a flagship new initiative called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) – a new fund to finance forest protection in tropical countries by leveraging the financial markets.
Many countries have backed Brazil’s push to raise more funding for forest protection, as the TFFF has been endorsed by the BRICS group of large emerging economies and a coalition of 34 nations behind a new forest finance framework including potential TFFF donors like Norway, Japan, the UK and Canada.
Still, Matson urged countries to work on improving and fully implementing their forest policies, rather than taking on new commitments at COP30. “COP is just where things get showcased, but it’s not where the work actually happens, beyond the negotiating room,” she said.
The post World failing on goal to halt deforestation by 2030, raising stakes for Amazon COP appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/10/14/world-failing-on-goal-to-halt-deforestation-by-2030-raising-stakes-for-amazon-cop/
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Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
Climate Change
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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