Portuguese organisations urge government to stop destruction of forests

As EU governments begin discussing new legislation to combat deforestation caused by the EU, national and international organisations are calling on citizens to urge their representatives to defend a robust law to stop deforestation-causing products from entering the European market.

Lisbon, 2 February 2022 - Organised under the umbrella of the #Together4Forests campaign, 180 environmental organisations across Europe are calling on national governments to restrict the EU's contribution to the destruction of forests and other ecosystems, as well as to human rights violations around the world. This call comes ahead of the meeting of environment ministers in Brussels next month to discuss the new draft regulation, presented by the European Commission on 17 November 2021.

In a protest action, environmentalists are drawing attention to the alarming rate at which the world is losing forests and demanding that the current Minister of Environment and Climate Action, João Pedro Matos Fernandes, as well as the Minister of Agriculture, Maria do Céu Antunes, contribute to the improvement of the next EU regulation to combat deforestation.

From Sweden to Romania, European organisations have taken aerial photographs to show how fast the world's forests are disappearing - every 2 seconds, an area the size of a football pitch disappears - partly because of European consumption of products sourced from the deforested areas. The organisations are calling for products that can put ecosystems at risk, including beef, soya, palm oil, rubber, timber and paper, to be proven free of links to the destruction of nature before being sold on the EU market.

In parallel, organizations throughout the European Union are calling on their citizens to ask the national ministers responsible for this discussion to defend a robust EU law capable of protecting forests. In Portugal, this action is being promoted by environmental associations ANPlWWF, FAPAS, GEOTA, LPN, Quercus, SPEA), Associação Zero and Plataforma TROCA.

This initiative comes after more than one million people and over 160 NGOs in the #Together4Forests coalition called for the protection of human rights, forests and other ecosystems from the impacts of European consumption and investments by banks operating in the EU. The current Commission proposal aims to require for the first time that companies selling products and raw materials in the EU demonstrate that their supply chains have no implications for forest destruction. However, environmental groups criticise the Commission's plans, especially as they have a number of weaknesses, including the fact that they only cover a small number of products, fail to protect other natural ecosystems (such as wetlands and savannahs), fail to adequately protect human rights and do not involve the financial sector.

The next steps

Environment and agriculture ministers from the 27 EU national governments will examine the European Commission's proposal for a regulation to combat deforestation and discuss amendments to it. The French government in charge of ministerial meetings has already indicated that it will make this regulation a priority during its mandate and it is expected that this legal instrument will be on the agenda of the next meeting of EU environment ministers in Brussels on 17 March.

The Portuguese Government is expected to play an active role and contribute to the improvement of the proposal, and that it may result in a key instrument in reducing EU driven deforestation and forest degradation worldwide, reducing the EU contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and global biodiversity loss, as well as promoting sustainable production and new consumption patterns in the EU.