SHARE
COPY LINK

ENVIRONMENT

Religious leaders join forces in Oslo to protect rainforests

Religious leaders around the world met Monday in Oslo to urge further efforts to fight deforestation that is wiping out thousands of square kilometres of rainforests each year.

Religious leaders join forces in Oslo to protect rainforests
Rainforest Foundation Norway leader Lars Løvold. File photo: Terje Pedersen/NTB scanpix

Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and Jewish leaders are meeting indigenous people affected by deforestation as well as experts on climate change and human rights over three days to devise an interfaith action plan for 2018.

It is thought to be the first time leaders from the world's major religions have joined forces to protect tropical rainforests, “the most diverse, unique nature system on Earth”, said Lars Løvold, director of Rainforest Foundation Norway.

Rainforests are refuges of biodiversity that regulate the climate and serve as home for “millions and millions of forest-based people”, he added.

While the rate of deforestation has slowed considerably in recent years, seven million hectares (70,000 square kilometres) of tropical forest were lost between 2000 and 2010, an area nearly the size of Ireland, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

READ ALSO: Norway spurs $400mn rainforest fund at Davos

Aggressive palm oil and soybean production, cattle farms, mining companies and the forestry industry all contribute to the deforestation, which in turn has devastating effects on climate change, scientists say.

“The Paris Agreement is doomed if deforestation continues,” Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment Vidar Helgesen said Monday, referring to the 2015 COP21 accord under which 195 states have pledged to curb greenhouse-gas emissions to keep global warming to under two degrees Celsius (3.6° F) from pre-industrial levels.

This month US President Donald Trump announced the United States' withdrawal from the agreement, a move that critics said could have a wide-reaching adverse effect on the environment as well as on Washington's international relations.

“The world's religions, each in its own way, ground a moral call to action to protect tropical rainforests,” said William Vendley, secretary general of Religions for Peace. 

READ ALSO: Norway pays Brazil $1bn for slowing Amazon loss

Paywall free

DRIVING

‘Città 30’: Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna has faced heavy criticism - including from the Italian government - after introducing a speed limit of 30km/h, but it's not the only city to approve these rules.

'Città 30': Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna on January 17th became Italy’s first major city to introduce a speed limit of 30km/h on 70 percent of roads in the city centre under its ‘Città 30’ plan, first announced in 2022, and initially set to come into force by June 2023.

The move made Bologna one of a growing number of European cities, including Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Bilbao, to bring in a 30km/h limit aimed at improving air quality and road safety.

But the change was met last week with a go-slow protest by Bologna’s taxi drivers and, perhaps more surprisingly, criticism from the Italian transport ministry, which financed the measure.

Matteo Salvini, who is currently serving as Italy’s transport minister, this week pledged to bring in new nationwide rules dictating speed limits in cities that would reverse Bologna’s new rule.

Salvini’s League party has long criticised Bologna’s ‘Città 30’ plan, claiming it would make life harder for residents as well as people working in the city and would create “more traffic and fines”.

OPINION: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

Bologna’s speed limit has sparked a heated debate across Italy, despite the increasingly widespread adoption of such measures in many other cities in Europe and worldwide in recent years.

While Bologna is the biggest Italian city to bring in the measure, it’s not the first – and many more local authorities, including in Rome, are now looking to follow their example in the next few years.

Some 60 smaller cities and towns in Italy have adopted the measure so far, according to Sky TG24, though there is no complete list.

This compares to around 200 French towns and cities to adopt the rule, while in Spain the same limit has applied to 70 percent of all the country’s roads since since May 2021 under nationwide rules, reports LA7.

The first Italian town to experiment with a 30 km/h speed limit was Cesena, south of Bologna, which introduced it in 1998. Since then, the local authority has found that serious accidents have halved, while the number of non-serious ones has remained unchanged.

Olbia, in Sardinia, also famously introduced the speed limit in 2021.

The city of Parma is planning to bring in the same rules from 2024, while the Tuscan capital of Florence approved five 30km/h zones in the city centre earlier this month.

Turin is set to bring in its first 30km/h limits this year as part of its broader plan to improve transport infrastructure, aimed at reducing smog and increasing livability.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has promised to introduce the limit on 70 percent of the capital’s roads by the end of his mandate, which expires in 2026.

In Milan, while the city council has voted in favour of lower speed limits and other traffic limitations on central roads, it’s not clear when these could come into force.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala this week said a 30 km/h limit would be “impossible” to implement in the Lombardy capital.

And it’s notable that almost all of the cities looking at slowing down traffic are in the north or centre-north of Italy.

There has been little interest reported in the measures further south, where statistics have shown there are a higher number of serious road accidents – though the total number of accidents is in fact higher in the north.

According to the World Health Organisation the risk of death to a pedestrian hit by a car driven at 50 km/h is 80 percent. The risk drops to 10 percent at 30 km/h.

The speed limit on roads in Italian towns and cities is generally 50, and on the autostrade (motorways) it’s up to 130.

Many Italian residents are heavily dependent on cars as their primary mode of transport: Italy has the second-highest rate of car ownership in Europe, with 670 vehicles per 1,000 residents, second only to Luxembourg with 682, according to statistics agency Eurostat.

SHOW COMMENTS