EU Free Trade Agreements & Climate Change

What's the problem with Free Trade Agreements?

The EU has signed several Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with forested countries in recent years and is negotiating more. These deals critically undermine the EU’s commitment to fight climate change, end deforestation and respect human rights. They intensify pressure on natural resources: exacerbating illegal logging, and deforestation and land grabs driven by agricultural expansion. Particularly shocking examples include the deals that the EU is negotiating with Indonesia and with the Mercosur bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).

Fern's work on this issue

What do Fern and our partners want?

A more inclusive, transparent approach to negotiating EU trade agreements, which should be aligned with EU commitments to protect forests and respect human rights.

What are we doing?

Working with NGO coalitions to ensure that EU trade deals are negotiated and implemented inclusively and transparently and include effective commitments to halt deforestation and promote climate, forest and human rights friendly bilateral trade.

Frequently asked questions

How can the European Union ensure that its trade doesn't cause more deforestation?

There are specific measures the EU can take to help prevent deforestation.

The EU can ensure that the free trade agreements emerge from a transparent, inclusive process, drawing on the views of civil society groups and relevant experts.

Lessons can also be learned from the EU’s FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade) action plan, whose Voluntary Partnership Agreements outline how to ensure only legal timber is imported from timber-producing countries. VPAs represent a unique example of trade being used as a tool to protect the environment and improve social safeguards.

Questions relating to the effectiveness of the dispute resolution process must also be addressed, and mechanisms such as inspections and evaluations should be included to ensure compliance.

Finally, strengthening the negotiation process and the content of trade agreements is important but insufficient. The EU also needs to consider a mandatory human rights due-diligence regulation to purge supply chains of deforestation and human rights violations.

Read more in Fern's report on free trade agreements

Does trade cause deforestation?

Yes, there's a vast body of evidence confirming direct and indirect links between trade and deforestation, as well as other forms of environmental destruction

A 2010 World Trade Organisation report found that trade liberalisation increases deforestation, which is responsible for roughly 12 per cent of global CO2 emissions. Another recent study showed that between 2000 and 2011 the production of beef, soy, palm oil and wood products in just seven countries was responsible for 3.8 million hectares of forest loss annually, leading to 1.6 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year. Also mentionable is this Harvard study which revealed that trade and growth can exacerbate environmental degradation (particularly CO2 emissions), or this 2016 report showing that opening specific areas of the Amazon to international trade increased deforestation.

What is a Free Trade Agreement?

A Free trade Agreement (FTA) is a bilateral or multilateral agreement between two or more countries to reduce barriers to imports and exports among them. The countries agree on certain obligations that affect trade in goods and services, and protections for investors and intellectual property rights, among other topics.