A Call to action at COP 30 on Deforestation: Experts now expect little action. Prove them wrong!

Personal commentary from Mark Fulton, Founder, Inevitable Policy Response.
 
Since its inception in 2018, The Inevitable Policy Response (IPR) has included land use alongside energy in all its forecasts and modelling. Central to reducing emissions from land use has been an end to net deforestation, including the build out of new forests or afforestation.
 
In 2021 and 2023 IPR forecast an end to net tropical deforestation[i] in key countries such as Brazil and Indonesia by 2030. An expert policy expectation survey was used to inform the IPR Forecasting group, who then in deliberation took a more optimistic view of what could be achieved, expecting international pressure to build to end to deforestation and increase land protection.
 
This was due both to the consideration of carbon impacts and to the implications on biodiversity – where rain forests in particular play such a key role in stabilizing ecosystems including regulating climate, reducing soil erosion, supporting livelihoods and providing ecosystem services.[ii] (Biodiversity and Nature were added as aspects to IPR in 2023.) Accelerated biodiversity loss could result in impacts to food and timber production and loss in ecosystem services valued as high as $2.7 trillion 2030[iii].
  
In this sense the previous IPR forecasts were founded on the understanding by policy makers of just how dangerous delayed action on deforestation could be. In 2025 we are letting the latest expert survey we conducted internationally after the US elections speak for itself. Experts do not seem to expect such realisation to galvanise policy action.
 
As a result, net deforestation assumptions have blown out at least 10 years (see Comparison Table below). This may well reflect that although Brazil has lowered its rate of deforestation, “…overall 6.37 million hectares of forests were lost in 2023 2023, 45% higher than the rate required to put the world on a pathway to meet the 2030 target, according to the 2024 Forest Declaration Assessment.”
 
IPR has not specifically advocated for policy in the past, although its forecasts can be seen as a challenge to policy makers to achieve these expectations. The IPR forecasting group in 2023 had also seen COP30 Ratchet crystalising pressure on when an end to deforestation would be reached.
 
Deforestation is certainly to be a key focus in November.“The challenge of being the leader of COP30 next year, in the heart of the Amazon forest, is huge,” said Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister and top climate diplomat, in late October 2024. The event is already being talked about as “the green COP,” Silva added.
 
On a more positive recent note, the February 2025 Biodiversity COP16 ended with an:
“.. agreement will guide countries on how to raise $200 billion a year by the end of the decade to meet the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a landmark nature pact adopted in December 2022,” Bloomberg reported.
 
This shows action is still possible.
 
Summary:
 
So, this 2025 current expectation of experts surveyed by IPR of a decade+ blow out to net deforestation is clearly a call to action for countries at COP30 in Brazil.
 
Limiting net deforestation to zero in the 2030/2035 time frame should be a key international priority at COP30 and prove the survey experts too pessimistic!

Comparison Table

Forecast end to net deforestation (by which year will forest losses no longer be greater than forest gains)

 
Footnotes:
[i] Defined as net deforestation or a reduction in average annual deforestation by more than 95 % versus the 1990-2020 level alongside net increase in forest cover
[ii] World Bank (October 25, 2023) Deforestation: Accelerating climate change and threatening biodiversity (link).
[iii] Source: World Bank (2021) The Economic Case for Nature (link)

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