Publications

NGO Statements

Celebrating forests by burning them is the wrong road, say 46 NGOs

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has chosen to use the International Day of Forests 2017 to promote the use of wood for energy, calling forests “nature’s power house”. Forests are precious ecosystems and well worth...

17/03/2017

Briefing Notes

Making Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) work for forests, people and the climate: Civil society recommendations on the future of VPAs

As decision makers in the European Union (EU) and timber producing countries consider the future of the FLEGT Action Plan, and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA), civil society organisations and platforms from Cameroon,...

16/03/2017

Reports

Arctic Limits: How Finland’s forest policies threaten the Sámi and the climate

Finland is a test case in the fight against climate change. As the world edges closer to breaching the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rises below 2 degrees, forests have become increasingly important in...

08/03/2017

Briefing Notes

EU consumption of Palm Oil and deforestation

Palm oil is the world’s most commonly used vegetable oil. After beef and soya, palm oil is the third largest agricultural cause of deforestation. Global production has more than doubled since 1990, reaching 64.5 million tonnes in...

07/02/2017

NGO Statements

Biofuels are not a way to decarbonise aviation

This letter to Commissioner Bulc explains why NGOs are concerned about his statement that “Biofuels are the ‘best choice’ at this point to start to decarbonize the industry”. Relying on large-scale biofuel cultivation leads to...

26/01/2017

Reports

Community forests: A discussion document for Fern and partners

Anyone who works with forest dwellers across the world asks themselves the following question at some point or another: Can community forests be a viable alternative to industrial logging? If so, what form would this alternative...

12/01/2017

The EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan and forests: How and why NGOs should engage

This report looks at the European Union (EU) Circular Economy Action Plan, presented in December 2015 by the European Commission (EC) as the Communication “Closing the loop - An EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy”. It...

06/01/2017

NGO Statements

NGO position on the post-2020 LULUCF Regulation

This position paper concludes that the EU should devise strong bioenergy sustainability criteria to ensure the EU only incentivises bioenergy that makes significant greenhouse gas savings and is resource efficient. It is endorsed...

09/12/2016

NGO Statements

NGO comments to European Commission investigation in to UK state aid to Drax power plan

In January of this year, the European Commission launched an investigation into whether the UK government’s financial support for Drax to convert part of its coal power plant to operate on biomass breaches the European Union’s...

07/12/2016

NGO Statements

How to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals? Focus on forests

In September 2015, world governments adopted an Agenda for Sustainable Development with 17 universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The aims are noble and daunting – end all forms of poverty, fight...

25/11/2016