25 years of achievements

Fern helped reduce EU illegal tropical timber imports by 60 per cent 

In 2003, Fern helped define the EU’s flagship programme to tackle illegal logging: the unique FLEGT Action Plan bans illegal timber from entering the EU market, improves local democracy and empowers civil society to protect forests.

Along with the EU timber regulation, this led a drastic change in the EU’s consumption pattern: illegal tropical timber imports were reduced by 60 per cent, from 3.4 million tons in 2003 to 1.5 million in 2014.

Fern ensured that the European Commission included environmental impact assessments in its aid programmes 

In 2007, Fern successfully convinced the European Commission to introduce environmental impact assessments in development aid programmes. EU’s official development assistance commitments for climate change mitigation increased more than four-fold between 2007 and 2011, reaching just short of €1 billion in 2011. 

Fern made sure that EU forests will play a key role in tackling climate change 

Since 2014 Fern has been the only NGO involved in complex negotiations about EU land use policies. Fern brought NGOs, academics and scientists together to ensure a wide chorus of voices called for EU forests’ carbon storing capacity to be increased as well as, not instead of emissions reductions in energy and transport.

Thanks to our advocacy, EU forests will remove 131 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere between 2020 and 2030, the equivalent of the EU’s total emissions for a year.

Fern built a coalition which halted biodiversity offsetting

Fern built a coalition of NGOs to challenge EU and Member State plans for biodiversity offsetting. This coalition managed to halt plans for such policies in the UK and the EU, thereby protecting old growth forests which can no longer be cut with the promise of “improving something else, somewhere else.”