SL pledges to restore 200,000 acres of forest land by 2020

Sri Lanka will restore a land area of 200,000-acres of forest land by the year 2020 in line with the Presidential Initiative ‘Sri Lanka Next: Blue Green Era’, Deputy Minister of Mahaweli Development and Environment Anuradha Jayarathne said.

He expressed these views while announcing the proposed Bonn Challenge pledge at the Bonn Challenge Asia Regional High-level Round-table meeting held in Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia on May 9 and 10.

“This Presidential Initiative was also communicated in the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) to increase the forest cover from 29% to 32% by 2018,” he said.

The Asia Bonn Challenge event brought together twelve Asian countries out of which India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mongolia and Sri Lanka all made pledges.

The restoration of 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands around the world will bring direct additional income opportunities for rural communities.

“Although Sri Lanka has already set targets to improve the forest cover and undertaken a number of corrective actions, the work has not been receiving prominence in the global arena. Therefore, it is highly advantageous that Sri Lanka made this pledge on the Bonn Challenge as it would highlight the country’s environmental commitment to the world,” the ministry said.

The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land by 2020, and restoration of 350 million hectares by 2030.

The 2020 Bonn Challenge target was launched in September 2011 at a highlevel event co-hosted by the Ministry of Environment in Germany and IUCN.