Will it fight fires? Empower forest communities? Plant trees? Police logging bans? Improve farm productivity? And who gets to decide? вЂњBig checks will not save the forests if the money does not go into the right hands,вЂќ said Carlos Rittl of the Rainforest Foundation Norway. Money always helps, though critics point out that there is no detail on how it will be spent. Their Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade Statement aims to вЂњdeliver sustainable trade and reduce pressure on forests.вЂќДЄnd finally, there is money: $12 billion of public funds and $7 billion of private investment promised to halt deforestation - including more than a billion dollars from the blue-chip LEAF Coalition, previewed on Yale Environment 360 a few days ago. The 2014 promise was to end вЂњnatural forest loss,вЂќ while the new one only commits to end net deforestation, so allowing new forests for old.Д«ut, more hopefully, some of the signatories are also promising to tackle the biggest cause of deforestation - the booming global trade in commodity crops such as palm oil, cocoa, and soya. First, the new target is weaker, and so easier to reach.

Will they do better this time? Several things have changed. The latest official assessment found that in the subsequent five years, the worldвЂ™s annual loss of primary forests actually increased - by 43 percent. Sadly, the promises didnвЂ™t amount to much. Seven years ago, most of the same nations signed up to the same target by the same date in a New York Declaration on Forests agreed at a climate summit held by then UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon. TuesdayвЂ™s highlight at the Glasgow climate summit was the Declaration on Forest and Land Use, under which more than 100 leaders - from Russia to Brazil to Canada to Indonesia - pledged to end deforestation and land degradation by 2030. If at first you donвЂ™t succeed, try another declaration.

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