While it has been the subject of much debate for many years, there can be now question that climate change is a real and present issue in the world today. Industry and modern living practices have skyrocketed our levels of carbon emissions, levels which have only been further elevated by deforestation of areas essential to pulling this carbon from the atmosphere. This carbon increase has resulted in rising global temperatures which decimate reefs and ocean populations and create heat waves which have resulted in record high temperatures in many areas around the word year after year. Thankfully in the face of these increasingly dire global issues many individuals and groups have stepped forward to combat the spread of climate change, chief among them being none other than the United Nations. The UN serves as a figurehead of unification for so many countries and organizations seeking to create lasting and positive change. Serving in this role, they have aligned members and supporters around 17 sustainable development goals to transform the world, promoting prosperity while simultaneously protecting our most precious resource, the planet. In this piece, I will provide an analysis of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 15, “Life on Land”, and explore the viability of proposed plans by examining mathematical concepts involved in financing development and implementing goals to reverse the land degradation and deforestation caused by human activities and climate change.
The goals laid out by the United Nations “Life on Land” initiative, from the objective of halting desertification to the aim of reversing deforestation, are unbelievably important to combating climate change, promoting development, and assuring sustainable food and resources for and ever-expanding world. That being said, they are also massive undertakings, and have the potential to be enormously expensive. Thankfully, on these two issues at least, the United Nations has been able to defray the direct cost to their organization considerably without compromising the desired effects. This is being done through diplomacy, via the implementation of two separate international agreements that promote the use of resources in an equitable and sustainable way. While this is a phenomenal step forward toward the overall goal of global sustainability and does minimize the financial burden substantially, it by no means entirely eliminates the need for monetary investment to support the initiative. After all, government action is slow at best, and action on these matters must carry forward in the interim if we are to maintain momentum. Thankfully, the United Nations seems to be well aware of this issue and has already taken steps to secure funding to continually support their land sustainability efforts as they wait on legislation to move forward. In June of 2018 The United Nations Development Programme announced the establishment of the Lion’s Share fund, an initiative centered around supporting Goal 15 sustainability and development efforts by asking that partners contribute a percentage of any media expenditures for advertisements which feature animals. For each such advertisement, fund affiliates will contribute .5 percent of their media spending toward the goal of cumulatively raising 100 million dollars a year within the next three years. At .5 percent contribution per advertisement, this goal would require a combined 2 billion dollars of advertising purchases from all fund contributes annually. This may sound like a tall order, but Lion’s Share has already made tremendous steps in collecting affiliates that will more than satisfy the organizational goals. Partners include Mars Inc., a global pet care and food manufacturer which in 2018 spent 823 million dollars on advertising in the United States alone, and JCDecaux, the world’s largest out-of-home advertising company which primarily focuses on outdoor brands and whose 2015 ad revenue reached 3.6 billion dollars. Overall this goal is entirely feasible, as it would appear that a single partner would be capable of generating the entirety if the funding goal alone, should they focus enough of their ad content on animals. While that is extremely unlikely, there are more than enough big spending partners attached to easily reach this goal now, let alone in another year’s time. That being said, Lion’s Share is a far cry from the complete financial backing required to establish global sustainable forestry practices, and the UN knows it. According to the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat, achieving sustainable forest management on a global scale would cost US$70-$160 billion per year. While entirely viable in achieving its established goals, far more support beyond Lion’s Share is needed to accomplish many of the targets established by this UN’s sustainable development goal.
With the financial aspect having now been accounted for, this leads us into particular goal targets proposed under sustainable development initiative 15, “Life on Land”. Forests cover just under 1/3 of the surface of the earth, and, as far as life on our planet is concerned, are invaluable. Forests provide food and shelter for millions of people, protect global biodiversity, and are essential in combating climate change. In 2014 NASA estimated that global forests were responsible for the absorption of 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. Furthermore, forest land degradation accounts for 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that a reversal could crack a serious blow at human climate change contributions. Due to the essential nature of our global forest lands, and they current and rapid way in which they are being degraded, the United Nations has established a target within Goal 15 to promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally by 2020. Now, 2020 is almost upon us and it is clear this target has yet to be hit, but rather than write it off as infeasible I chose in my examination to extend the deadline out to 2030, matching many of the other restorative targets contained within this sustainability initiative. Halting deforestation is a big move, as at the current rate 13 million hectares of forested land are being lost annually to a variety of human causes. While deforestation has decreased drastically in the last few decades, we have still degraded our forests by a total of 129 million hectares since 1990. At the current rate of forest loss, to restore deforested territories back to 1990 levels in the next ten years would require almost 26 million hectares of forested land to be recovered every year, indicated by the figure below.
\[\frac{129\text{ million hectares} + (13\text{ million hectares} \times 10\text{ years})}{10\text{ years}}\approx 26\text{ million hectares per year}\]
This is a massive figure, requiring recovery at twice our current annual rate of loss. To put in perspective how truly large of a quantity this is, 26 million hectares is equivalent to 260,000 square kilometers, an area roughly the size of New Zealand, which would need to be recovered every year for the next ten years. It seems an impossible battle to be fielded by the United Nations alone, and certainly not one to be fixed by simply planting more trees. In order to reach a satisfying conclusion to this target goal, it seems essential that the implementation of international agreements to promote the use of resources in an equitable and sustainable way be successful. Under the assumption that involved countries would shift to a 100 percent sustainable policy in regard to use of forested land, recovery efforts would annually be half of those proposed in the figure above, having eliminated the need for recovery of an additional 130 million hectares over the following ten years. This number is still large, but also matches our current annual rate of deforestation. If countries themselves took on the burden of recovery in the adaptation of sustainable practices, it seems far more feasible for the United Nations and affiliates to recover the remainder of lost area within the prescribed timetable.
From even this more cursory analysis of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 15, “Life on Land”, it is plain to see that in their task of halting and reversing the land degradation and deforestation caused by human activities and climate change the UN has accepted a massive undertaking. While the fiscal planning to finance the Lion’s Share fund is entirely sound and feasible, the amount to be garnered from such an endeavor is a drop in the bucket next to what will be needed to accomplish the goals set forth under this sustainability initiative. According to estimates by the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat and the Convention on Biological Diversity, the combined financial weight to achieve sustainable forest management on a global scale and halt the loss of biodiversity at a global level by the middle of this century would amount to as much as 600 billion dollars a year, a burden too heavy for any one nation or organization to bear. The target of reversing and halting global deforestation by 2030 bears a little better at achieving a complete goal but is highly dependent upon a number of factors and could only be called potentially viable at best. The ability for this target goal to be reached by the United Nations is entirely reliant upon the success of diplomacy and speedy implementation of international agreements that promote the use of resources in an equitable and sustainable way. It is this fact, in truth, that mirrors my overall takeaway form the analysis of this goal; global participation is essential to turn the tide of global degradation toward a more sustainable future.
Bibliography
“Countries Compared by Geography > Area > Land. International Statistics.” NationMaster.com, NationMaster, https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Area/Land.
Espinoza, Luis. “NASA Finds Good News on Forests and Carbon Dioxide.” NASA, NASA, 17 Apr. 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/nasa-finds-good-news-on-forests-and-carbon-dioxide.
“Forests, Desertification and Biodiversity – United Nations Sustainable Development.” United Nations, United Nations, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/biodiversity/.
“Global OOH & DOOH Revenue 2016.” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/272948/global-out-of-home-advertising-expenditure/.
Irfan, Umair. “Why Restoring Nature Is so Important to Limiting Climate Change.” Vox, Vox, 6 Nov. 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/11/6/20883736/climate-change-nature-solutions-ecosystem-restoration.
“Life on Land: Why It Matters.” United Nations Sustainable Development, United Nations, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/15.pdf.
“Mars: Ad Spend in the U.S. 2018.” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/463074/mars-ad-spend-usa/.
“World Deforestation Slows down as More Forests Are Better Managed.” FAO, http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/326911/icode/.