Germanwatch-Blog

Deforestation, overexploitation and climate change threaten forests around the world. The European Union also plays an inglorious role in this. To change this, the European Commission presented yesterday a legislative proposal to prevent products from forest destruction from entering the EU internal market in the future. At the same time, a general EU supply chain law is being planned. Is the EU Commission duplicating its efforts? No, say Julia Otten and Johannes Heeg from our member Germanwatch and the Initiative Lieferkettengestz.

A thousand kilometer railway line is intended to make industrial soy production in Brazil cheaper and increase exports. As the second largest buyer of Brazilian soy, the European Union is already partly responsible for the social and ecological damage caused by soy production and for the expansion of cattle pastures in forest areas. Brazil's indigenous population are resisting the construction, pointing to the disregard of their rights and the threat to the climate and biodiversity.

The outcome of the UN climate conference is one of ambivalence: while there is strong momentum for phasing out coal and pressure being placed on reluctant climate action, for the 1.5 degree limit to come within reach, China in particular needs to improve its climate target soon and the US needs to implement its very well. In addition, results on the issue of Loss and Damage are insufficient.

On 14 October 2021, Alejandro Brown, president of Fundación Proyungas from the Gran Chaco, researchers Laura Kehoe (University of Oxford) and Alfredo Romero Muñoz (Humboldt University Berlin) as well as policy advisor Barbara Hermann (Climate Focus) highlighted the impacts of deforestation in the Gran Chaco through international trade and the difficulties of a zero-deforestation approach. They warned that the Gran Chaco is in a very critical state and further deforestation could lead to the total destruction of the ecosystems.

Two years after the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s multilateral development banks (MDBs) committed to align their financial flows with the landmark climate pact’s goals.

Now, four years later, it’s clear that as a group, the MDBs are still a long way away from realizing their commitment throughout their portfolios. While MDBs have focused on aligning direct investments with Paris goals, this effort is not sufficiently ambitious, nor is it complete. They have paid less attention to whether their indirect investments support climate goals. And policy-based loans — a favored instrument during times of crisis — also remain a blind spot.

How do European livestock farmers know whether forests have been cleared for the cultivation of soy in their feed? So far, feed manufacturers have pretended to be unable to take responsibility for their supply chains. Tracing back the origin of the soy through many intermediaries along the global supply chain was too difficult for them. In the future, however, an EU law could require companies to take responsibility for their global supply chains.

The climate crisis is hitting us right now and threatens to get much worse. Germany and the EU bear a special responsibility: What we do or don't do in Europe, our food and our trade system, have an impact on other parts of the world. This can be seen, for example, by looking at the destruction of forests in the Mercosur economic area – in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Interview with Giulia Dias (18), an activist with Fridays for Future (FFF) Amazônia. She studies law, lives in the city of Belém in northern Brazil and does research on the rights of indigenous communities in her country at the Emílio Goeldi Museum.

While the regions Greece, Kosovo and Serbia face common challenges like high unemployment, depopulation and brain drain – trends like decarbonisation and energy transition are supplementary hindrances. This Blog provides an assessment of the internal and external environment for each region and how the "Green Rural Deal-Project" will bridge them towards a low-to-zero-carbon development and serve as a "proof of concept" that even for the most deprived regions, the transition provides multiple benefits.

In the upcoming week, the 13th meeting of the WIM ExCom will take place (April 27-30 2021). One very important issue to discuss will be – among other issues – the work of the Expert Groups as they play a major role in carrying out the activities of the ExComs workplan. Especially the work on Action and Support, Slow-onset Events and Non-economic Losses will be discussed and concrete steps for developing the respective workplans with concrete activities will have to be decided upon. The meeting will take place in a virtual format and even over one year in the COVID-19-pandemic this setting still poses some substantive challenges to the discussions and inclusiveness as well the involvement of observers.