As communities around the world hail glimpses of resurgent urban wildlife and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions related to the COVID-19 shutdown, other environmental news is somewhat disappointing, says Robert Nasi, the director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

For example, he points out, this week the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association reported a sharp increase in global carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, while the pandemic shows no immediate signs of altering rates of deforestation in a positive direction.

Nasi, one of the world’s top forestry experts, delivered the remarks after key preliminary findings of the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 (FRA) were launched by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealing that the world is still losing 10 million ha of forests annually.

Forests News interviewed Nasi, who dug into the data from the report, which is released every five years by FAO.

Nasi shaped his responses in the context of various internationally agreed development and environmental policy frameworks, referring to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (ABT) established under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the New York Declaration on Forests, (NYDF) which was agreed at U.N. climate talks in 2014.

Read the interview at Forests News.