Around 100 nations pledge to slash methane emissions on day 2 of COP26

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has pledged $2 billion to directly restoring nature and transforming food systems as parts of the Bezos Earth Fund's $10 billion commitment to "fight climate change, enhance nature and advance environmental justice and economic opportunity."

Making the announcement at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, he said: "We must conserve what we still have, we must restore what we've lost, and we must grow what we need to live without degrading the planet for future generations to come."

Bezos said his space flight reminded him that nature is fragile, the Earth is finite and the atmosphere is thin.

This comes as world leaders at the summit have emphasized the need of private sector to play a greater role in climate action.

Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba presented a stark warning to the global leaders present at the COP26 summit in Glasgow on Tuesday, saying, "The doors to the future our closing."

"IPCC [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] tells us there is no valuable future without the tropical rainforests. This is my hope that Glasgow will mark a turning point," Ondimba added.

The leader of the Central African nation invited world leaders to invest responsibly in Gabon's forests and urged them to stand by the country in its "efforts to protect and understand our forest's ecosystem."

Ending on a hopeful note, Ondimba concluded: "Together, we [can] keep our forests standing and the door open for our children and their children."

“Climate change and biodiversity loss are two sides of the same coin,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday as he took to the stage at the first ever COP world leaders’ session on forest and land use.

The event launched a declaration from over 100 leaders -- accounting for more than 85% of the world’s forests -- to work together to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

Johnson stressed the particular significance of £5.3 billion ($7.2 billion) of private investment in the pledge in “supporting sustainable jobs” -- alongside £8.75 billion ($12 billion) of public funds.

“As we sign this declaration today, let’s also galvanize a radical shift in public and private finance. Let’s channel funds towards securing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.” 

Joining the UK Prime Minister on stage was Columbian President Iván Duque Márquez, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, co-director of the pavilion of the World Indigenous Peoples’ Initiative.

“I am very glad that this climate negotiation has started to consider that nature and forests have a key role to play in meeting the objective of the Paris Agreement,” said Oumarou Ibrahim.

Further to the declaration on deforestation, 28 governments, representing 75% of global trade in key commodities that can threaten forests, have signed up to a new Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Statement. 

“There is no value in making [a] beautiful speech here about deforestation if at home you let the private sector steal indigenous peoples’ land or destroy the ecosystem,'' Oumarou Ibrahim added.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that over 10 countries, the Bezos Earth Fund and the European Union have signed the Congo Basin Pledge which will mobilize over $1.5 billion to protect forests, peatlands and other critical carbon stores.

"I'm delighted to announce at this summit, that the world is coming together around their effort ... with at least $1.5 billion over the next five years to help protect the ... precious ecosystems of Central Africa," Johnson said, underlining the work of the presidents of the Republic of Congo and Gabon.

Johnson added that the funds were part of a new global forest finance pledge of over $12 billion, which he said amounted to "the biggest collective commitment of public funds for forest and climate action in history."

Earlier, the British government said that more than 100 world leaders representing over 85% of the planet's forests would commit on Tuesday to ending and reversing deforestation and land degradation by 2030 -- the first substantial deal announced at the COP26 climate talks.

President Joe Biden announced a new plan to conserve global forests on the second day of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, in the first major deal to break at the talks. 

“Today I’m announcing a new plan to conserve global forest, which will bring together a full range of US government tools, diplomatic, financial and policy to halt forests loss, restore critical carbon sinks, and improve land management,” Biden said. 

The President said: “Conserving our forest and other critical ecosystems is indispensable, an indispensable piece of keeping our climate goals within reach, as well as many other key priorities that we have together: ensuring clean water, maintaining biodiversity, supporting rural and indigenous communities and reducing the risk of the spread of disease."

“Forests have the potential to reduce, reduce carbon globally by more than one third. By more than one third. So we need to approach this issue with the same seriousness of purpose as decarbonizing our economies. That's what we're doing in the United States," Biden said.

Here is what happened during the first full day of the UN's COP26 climate summit:

A deal on forests:

Biden's apology:

The UK wheels out the big names:

India makes net-zero promise:

Small nations' disappointment:

Covid-19 measures hampering the negotiations:

Read more about the takeaways here:

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5 takeaways from the first day of COP26: Biden's apology, India's pledge, much disappointment

More than 100 world leaders representing over 85% of the planet's forests will commit on Tuesday to ending and reversing deforestation and land degradation by 2030, a British government statement says, in what would be the first substantial deal announced at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

Among the nations taking part are Canada, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which have significant tracts of forest. Brazil in particular has come under criticism for allowing an increase in the deforestation of the Amazon in recent years. The US and China will also be party to the agreement.

The deal is consequential to the climate as forests, when they are logged or degrade, emit carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, accounting for around 11% of the world's total CO2 emissions.

The leaders will make the announcement during a COP26 session about forests and commit £8.75 billion ($12 billion) of public funds to protection and restoration, alongside £5.3 billion ($7.2 billion) of private investment. CEOs from more than dozens of financial institutions, including Aviva, Schroders and Axa, are also committing to ending investment in activities that lead to deforestation.

The agreement will likely provide a morale boost at COP26, which got off to shaky start after the G20 leaders' summit in Rome over the weekend failed to result in an agreement on firm new climate commitments, particularly on when to end the use of coal.

It is also a breakthrough after years of negotiations on how to protect forests. 

Read more on the deal here:

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More than 100 world leaders will agree to end deforestation by 2030 at COP26

The world leaders summit at the COP26 conference in Glasgow continues on Tuesday, with the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari among those scheduled to speak. 

But while the world leaders are speaking on the stage, the real negotiations are under way in meeting rooms down the corridor where representatives of the 193 signatories of the Paris Agreement are trying to find a consensus on how the deal should be enforced. 

Here are some of the items they are trying to achieve:

Climate negotiations are always tricky, which is why the delegates have two whole weeks to find solutions.

Even then, it is far from certain they will be able to reach an agreement. Previous COP conferences in Katowice in 2018 and Madrid in 2019 failed to reach a deal on some of the thorniest issues.

President Biden apologized to other world leaders on Monday for the Trump administration's decision to exit the Paris climate agreement, saying during the United Nations' climate summit that the US' exit put the country behind in its climate goals.

The President announced the US would rejoin the Paris accords hours after he was sworn into office in January.

During the session, Biden also said "the American people, four or five years ago, weren't at all sure about climate change, whether it was real."

"Well, they have, as they say in southern parts of my state, 'seen the lord.' They've seen what's happened back home. The incredible changes that are taking place. And they're now finally ... seeing the sense of urgency that you all are," Biden continued.

In his earlier opening remarks at the summit, Biden issued a plea and a warning to global leaders to take forceful action on climate change, even as his own climate ambitions hang in the balance.