Germany pledges €250m to protect global forests

Germany’s Development Ministry has pledged €200 million ($210 million) during the UN Climate Action Summit in New York for a programme to protect the world’s forests, the ministry confirms.

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller and World Bank president David Malpass created the programme ProGreen for the protection of forests, which hopes to receive around $1 billion in funds.

“The Amazon rainforest alone produces 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen,” Mueller said. “But, every four seconds, a surface the size of a football field is logged – especially for huge soy and palm-oil plantations. Eleven per cent of CO2 emissions can be traced to deforestation. We must stop this immediately,” he said.

Germany is also to pledge a further 30 million euros for the Central African Forest Initiative and 20 million euros to support indigenous peoples.

Source: dpa