Summary Note 15 (December 2023)
This Summary presents the discussions held, in person and online, during the 16th session of the EMRIP, July 17 to 21, 2023.
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112TH SESSION OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
2024-04-08 - 2024-04-29Dear friends,
Docip is pleased to share with you the joint campaign of our partner FERN on the action plan of the European Union on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT).
In 2003, the European Union adopted a ground-breaking initiative to tackle the root causes of illegal logging: The Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. Acknowledging that there isn’t a silver bullet to address a problem as complex as illegal logging, it proposed a holistic approach consisting of a unique mix of demand and supply side measures.
For over a decade, stakeholders in forest rich countries have invested time, energy, and resources to clean up their forest sector and have achieved important successes in terms of addressing the underlying causes of illegal logging and improving governance including, securing communities’ rights, legal reforms, and enforcement.
The European Commission will soon propose a new regulation to ensure EU agriculture supply chains do not drive global deforestation. But this Regulation will only work if it is coupled with measures to help highly forested countries tackle the root causes of deforestation.
This makes FLEGT more relevant than ever. Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), which have successfully opened space for deliberative processes to address the root causes of illegal logging, are a key complement to any future EU demand side measures.
In this spirit, over forty NGOs from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe are calling on EU decision makers to not only uphold their commitments to FLEGT, but to draw inspiration from it while developing new regulatory measures to stop imported deforestation and preserve forests at home and abroad.
Upgrading support for the FLEGT Action Plan would be one of the most effective ways to achieve international biodiversity and climate objectives. It will also allow the EU to continue playing a leading role on the environment and achieve the aims of the European Green Deal.
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