Ursula von der Leyen, President-elect of the European Commission, has promised to deliver a European Green New Deal in her first 100 days in office. Fern's new briefing note, A Green New Deal for Forests explains how such a deal will need to ensure healthy growing forests inside and outside of Europe, to truly tackle the challenges of climate change.  

To achieve this, the Green New Deal must ensure:

• EU imports of agricultural products like soy, beef, palm oil and cocoa don’t cause deforestation or human misery:

As part of the EU Communication to Protect and Restore the World’s Forests the EU must create a regulation to ensure products placed on the EU market have not caused negative social and environmental impacts.

• All planned and future trade deals aim to eradicate deforestation:

Trade agreements must contain legally enforceable provisions to protect land rights, avoid deforestation, implement the Paris Agreement and require companies to meet international obligations. Negotiations should be a multi-stakeholder process including civil society and existing civil society monitoring mechanisms should also be clarified, strengthened and properly resourced.  

• EU forests are restored:

We need to better allocate resources to promoting restoration, environmental forest management, and protection. This could be achieved through a natural carbon removals policy, linked to a biodiversity strategy, and an end to wasteful uses of wood such as single use or short-lived products and industrial electricity generation.

• An end to EU imports of illegal timber:

The EU needs to increase financial and political support for the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan and ensure all Member States are implementing the EU Timber Regulation.

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