Aims and history of the EC Forest Platform

The EC Forest Platform was set up in 2002 to improve the quality of EC aid by bringing European Commission officials in direct contact with the people and organisations that know about forest issues in recipient countries. Our main partner organisations were Telapak in Indonesia and CED in Cameroon. Our aims included:

·         Giving a voice to NGOs and forest peoples who wanted to present their issues to the European Commission

·         Creating a space to debate the impacts of EC aid policies and projects on forests and forest peoples

·         Providing information to EC policy makers about forests and forest peoples

Platform work

In 2002 we investigated how EC aid would be spent in 16 highly-forested countries, revealing that much of the money given by the EC for development did not recognise the role that forests play in providing food, fuel and materials for forest-dependent people. We also produced the newsletter Platform News, which helped share information among the partners.

The natural follow up of the 2002 report was to assess the success of the tols set up by the EC to improve their environmental performance in the south. We therefore analysed, in 2007 and 2009, the public availability of the environmental documents used by the EC, and looked at the quality and value of the environmental assessments that feed into aid spending. These two reports were made jointly with WWF and BirdLife.

Achievements

·         In 2004, the development of environmental profile became mandatory for all EC cooperation plans. This is probably one of the largest successes as it is the first step of the process to ensure a proper debate on mainstreaming environment in developing cooperation.

·         The EC Development Policy Declaration (January 2006) has as its main goal ‘poverty reduction in the context of sustainable development’. The environment became a sector for cooperation while continues being a cross-cutting issue that has to be integrated in EC the aid programme. Moreover, indigenous peoples’ rights acquired the status of being a cross-cutting issue.

·         In 2006,  analysis of the environmental situation of every country or region (known as Common Framework for Country Strategy Papers) and the summary of the environmental profile became mandatory sections of the EC cooperation documents.

The Forest Platform today

By 2008, it was clear that many of the policy changes that the Forest Platform had been asking for had been taken on and that whilst there was still a need to monitor implementation, this would not require the same level of coordination. FERN and its partners will periodically analyse whether the Platform should be restarted but presently it is clear that our work and that of our partners should be focused on climate change and forest governance improvements. The Platform Newsletter therefore has ceased to exist.