Background

Tropical Forest Alliance calls for EU action to protect and restore the world’s forests

Published: 10/12/2020

The Tropical Forest Alliance is proposing a ‘smart mix’ of mutually reinforcing measures to address the drivers of deforestation in the EU.

A ‘smart mix’ of measures by the EU is necessary to help tackle the negative impacts on forests associated with the production of forest risk commodities, including:

Partnerships between the EU and producer countries to put in place the enabling conditions necessary to protect forests and improve the standards of production of agricultural commodities.

  • EU legislation to introduce an obligation of due diligence on companies involved in commodity supply chains, and to put in place other demand-side measures to support markets for sustainably produced commodities.
  • Dialogue with other consumer countries, to ensure that stricter standards in the EU market do not simply divert unsustainably produced products away to other markets.
  • Measures to steer flows of finance and investment away from unsustainable and towards sustainable activities and supply chains.
  • Encouragement for robust, consistent and practical systems and approaches to enable companies to assess, verify and report on risk and risk mitigation within their supply chains.

This is the conclusion of a large and growing group of companies from across the supply chain, and NGOs, that participated in the Tropical Forest Alliance’s series of roundtable discussions on action to protect forests held between April and July 2020.

The Tropical Forest Alliance is a multi-stakeholder partnership platform established to support companies through the ongoing global transition to deforestation-free supply chains for commodities including palm oil, soy, beef, and paper/pulp. We accelerate Forest-Positive Collective Action among our 170+ alliance members — and beyond.

FoodDrinkEurope members Cargill, Danone, Ferrero, General Mills, MARS, Mondelēz, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever are members of the Tropical Forest Alliance.

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