Here are a few outcomes:
- This COP was extremely important after the United States announced that they will opt out of the Paris agreement. The rest of the world stayed united. The global community has made significant progress since The New York Declaration on Forests (2014).
- The U.K. and Canada have launched a global alliance committed to moving the planet away from burning coal and towards cleaner sources of power.
- 2017 (and COP23) was a technical year for negotiators to develop concrete ideas and text for a COP24 decision on the implementation of Article 6, of the Paris Agreement.
- There is a strong consensus that forest action is essential to meet climate goals. For example, we now know that cost-effective nature based solutions, including forest restoration, can achieve over 1/3 of the climate mitigation needed to the target of 2 degrees by 2030. Bonn Challenge is not merely a pledge campaign but also one of implementation, the new Global Platform for the New York Declaration on Forests launched at COP very much works towards this goal. The FLR movement is commencing a new phase of large-scale implementation.
- WeForest, as part of the FLoRES Task force, has highlighted the need to pay greater attention to the quality of FLR (Forest Landscape Restoration) practices and results, and to this end, is calling for the development of a standard for forest landscape restoration.
