Malta is among more than 100 countries pledging to end and reverse deforestation by the year 2030, in the COP26 climate summit’s first major agreement.

The COP26 deal is expected to be signed later today and includes the country Brazil, which is the home of the Amazon rainforest, where the cutting down of trees has increased and intensified over the last few years. The pledge includes €16,000,000 of public and private funds and though experts welcomed the move, they warned that a previous deal in 2014 had “failed to slow deforestation at all.”

Cutting trees down contributes to climate change because it depletes forests that absorb huge amounts of C02, the gas that contributes greatly to global warming. Large tracts of forests are removed on a yearly basis to make space for grazing areas and agriculture to feed the world’s population.

Malta’s contribution may be deemed as insignificant within the global context, but the pledge includes a commitment to “conserve forests and other territorial ecosystems and accelerate their restoration.” Countries will also be committed to “facilitate trade and development policies, internationally and domestically, which promote sustainable development and sustainable commodity production and consumption.”

In Malta, tree cover is low and woodland cover is, in fact, less than 5% of the area of the Maltese Islands, according to the State of the Environment report, which was released in 2018. The report covered the period until 2015 and noted that 67,000 trees were planted between 2008 and 2015 in a number of afforestation initiatives across the islands.