A $100m philanthropic fund for firefighting was announced during the New York Climate Week and the UN general Assembly. The scheme was aimed towards South America, home to the Amazon, which endured its most severe fire seasons on record. The fund aims to improve detection and response with targets to update camera networks and improve prior firefighting teams.
However, the UN admitted an extra $66.8b is needed by 2030 to conserve and restore all tropical rainforest. Although this may seem like a step in the right direction, the scheme cuts off funding to other major rainforest environments. The funding is unequally distributed leaving vast areas of forest in Africa and Southeast Asia unrepresented. The Congo basin is the world’s largest net sink, yet the region only receives 11 per cent of international forest funding alongside Indonesia where peat fires are causing widespread devastation having lost an area nearly three times the size of Singapore in only half a year.
So why does the funding gap persist?
Lee White, one of the authors of the U.N. study blames failure of the political system; wealthier nations are inclined to pay for adaptation and recovery in the future than invest in mitigation. Whereas Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara, the executive director of the Centre of Economic and Law Studies (a Jakarta based think tank), argues it is the responsibility of the Indonesian Foreign Ministry to approach the UN directly and ask for funding.
Whether it is the responsibility of wealthier donors or the recipient nations is debatable. But with El Niño becoming an ever-increasing risk likely to worsening droughts and heat waves, the pressing need for global action is compelling. Focusing on one region, although well intentioned, risks leaving the worlds other critical forests to burn.
Photo by fabian jones on Unsplash
