Annual Report 2020
19 July 2021
2020 marked Fern’s 25th anniversary. It was also the year that COVID overshadowed all else, triggering the biggest global upheaval since the Second World War. The pandemic - and the well-documented links between the relentless destruction of the natural world and the spread of zoonotic diseases - only heightened the urgency of Fern’s mission to protect forests, and the rights of forest peoples.
Against this turbulent backdrop, political interest in forests rose sharply – as did the endless hours we spent locked working online – and there was an unprecedented number of EU policies and regulations demanding our attention.
Our Annual Report provides an overview of what 2020 held for the world’s forests and the EU policies affecting them; COVID’s impact on our work; why organisational development is so important in a horizontal structure; and a typical day in the lives of two of our EU national partners and our communications intern.