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Nov 3, 2021

Forest Investor Club set up at COP26 meet

FA News Desk
The Costa Rican rainforest, one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world.Fabio Fistarol
The Costa Rican rainforest, one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world.Fabio Fistarol

At COP26 during the World Leaders Summit’s Forest Day session, the United States launched the Forest Investor Club. 

This network of leading public and private financial institutions and other investors aims to unlock and scale up investments that support sustainable, climate-aligned outcomes in the land sector.

These financial institutions and Network Partners are committed to increasing the scale and geographic scope of investment in restoration, conservation, sustainable agriculture and forestry, and green infrastructure.

The Forest Investor Club will accelerate the pace, increase the scale, and expand the scope of forest and nature investment by identifying and facilitating access to a pipeline of investments in forests and nature, collaborating under complementary partnerships to unlock investment opportunities, and working to develop solutions to investment barriers and bottlenecks.

The pledge to protect and conserve global forests is unprecedented. Image AP

The Founding Members of the Forest Investor Club include Apple, BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group, Conservation International, Convergence Finance, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, FinnFund, Goldman Sachs, Hancock Natural Resource Group, Lombard Odier, Mirova, Norfund, NewForests, Pollination, SAIL Ventures, The Nature Conservancy, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Meanwhile, the United States, the European Union, and partners formally launched the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative to reduce global methane emissions to keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach.  

A total of over 100 countries including Nepal representing 70% of the global economy and nearly half of anthropogenic methane emissions have now signed onto the pledge. The countries who have joined the Pledge represent all regions of the world and include representatives from developed and developing nations.

The strong global support for the Pledge illustrates growing momentum to swiftly reduce methane emissions—widely regarded as the single most effective strategy to reduce global warming.  

Countries joining the Global Methane Pledge commit to a collective goal of reducing global methane emissions by at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030 and moving towards using best available inventory methodologies to quantify methane emissions, with a particular focus on high emission sources.