Seoul Declaration

In News

• Recently, the Seoul Declaration was adopted at the XV World Forestry Congress, held in Seoul, South Korea.

About Seoul Declaration

• Host: The five-day congress is hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
• Period: It is held every six years.
• Aim: It aims to share worldwide forest-related and environmental problems, like climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification, and devise solutions through forests.
• Focus area: The Declaration focuses on identifying key areas that can help combat multiple crises humanity faces.
• Signatories: The Declaration is signed by 141 participant countries.
• Immediate need: There is a Need to triple investments for restoring degraded land by 2030.
  • Vast areas of degraded land across the globe require restoration.
  • For this, the investment in forest and landscape restoration globally must be tripled by 2030 to implement global commitments and meet internationally agreed goals and targets.

What’s Driving Deforestation? / Challenges

• Agribusiness: in which huge areas of forest are burned or cleared to make space for crops and livestock is the number one driver of deforestation. These practices are turning some of the most biodiverse areas in the world into monocultures.
• Illegal logging: is an immense, multi-billion dollar industry threatening forests worldwide. Some research even suggests that illegal activities make up more than 10 per cent of the global timber trade, representing more than $150 billion per year.
• Pulp, Paper and Disposable Packaging: Logging for pulp and paper production can have a tremendous impact on our global forests; from driving deforestation in tropical forests, to degrading huge swaths of temperate and boreal forests.
• Mining: Coal and bitumen (oil) extraction have permanently destroyed large swathes of some of the world’s most important forests.
• Hydroelectric Dams: Hydroelectric dams can flood upstream forests, causing widespread forest loss, habitat degradation, and the displacement of forest communities.

Significance of the Declaration

• Action needed: The Seoul Forest Declaration sends a powerful message that forests, forestry and forest stakeholders offer major solutions to the challenges the world currently faces, but action is needed now.
• International cooperation: The Declaration also stressed on international cooperation.
• Vital for biodiversity: Forests transcend political, social and environmental boundaries and are vital for biodiversity and the carbon, water and energy cycles at a planetary scale.
• Use of innovative technology: It also urged the use of innovative technology and mechanisms to enable evidence-based forest and landscape decision-making and effective forest communication.
• New partnerships such as the Assuring the Future of Forests with Integrated Risk Management (AFFIRM) Mechanism, the Sustaining an Abundance of Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) initiative and the Platform for REDD+ Capacity Building were also undertaken at the Congress to boost international participation and cooperation.
• Close relation: The Declaration also pointed out that the health of forests and humans was closely related and forest degradation can have serious negative impacts on human health and well-being.
• Reduce the risk of future pandemics: Forests must be maintained in a healthy and productive state to reduce the risk of future pandemics and to provide other essential benefits for the physical and mental health of mankind.
• Sustainable Wood: The full potential of sustainably produced wood can be utilised to transform the building sector, along with providing renewable energy and innovative new materials as wood was renewable, recyclable and incredibly versatile.
  • Each country agreed to nationally determined contributions by 2030.

Way forward/ Suggestions

• We must now scale up political will and increase financial and technical investments.
  • The Declaration will add to the sense of urgency to accelerate action, strengthen partnerships and enhance cross-sectoral collaboration.
• Shared responsibility: The responsibility over forests should be shared and integrated across institutions, sectors and stakeholders in order to achieve a sustainable future.
• Forest-based solutions must be inclusive of the perspectives of family farmers, smallholders, forest communities, indigenous peoples, women and youth and respectful of their rights.
• Sustainable forest value chains: The solutions must empower them to participate equitably in decision-making and sustainable forest value chains.
• The Declaration added that the outcomes of the 15th WFC, including it as well as the Youth Call for Action and the Ministerial Call on Sustainable Wood, should be transmitted to the next Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, to the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the CBD and to other important forest-related fora.  

Source: DTE