Fighting Global Deforestation

This is an online event.

Despite recognition of the multifaceted problem that is deforestation, multilateral institutions for forest governance remain extremely weak, while zero deforestation commitments by transnational corporations and national governments have produced limited effects to date. In this context, the European Commission recently released its long-awaited proposal for a deforestation regulation, which prohibits businesses from placing agricultural products derived from deforested land on the EU market and requires them to demonstrate due diligence that they have mitigated the risks of doing so, subject to stringent penalties.

This public symposium will bring together policy makers, researchers, and stakeholders from within and beyond the EU to discuss the ambitions, challenges, and opportunities of the proposed regulation, including areas where the proposed legislation might be improved to take account of concerns raised by the participants. The symposium consists of two linked panels: the first one focused on demand-side measures to ensure that products placed on the EU market are deforestation-free – a video-recording of the panel can be found here. This second panel considers supply-side measures undertaken in partnership with producer countries to combat deforestation and forest degration, including the new Forest Partnerships, drawing inter alia on the experience of the FLEGT VPAs, to enhance both the legitimacy and the effectiveness of EU external action against deforestation.

About the speakers

Bojan Grlaš is a Team Leader on International Forestry Issues in DG Environment, European Commission, covering policy development and implementation, regulatory and policy dialogues with partner countries, multilateral organisations (OECD, WTO) as well as negotiation and implementation of trade agreements. His main areas of work have been trade, international relations, sustainable use of resources and circular economy. Before joining the Commission, he worked at the United Nations and at the World Bank.

Sebastian Lesch is Head of the Division Sustainable Agricultural Value Chains, International Agricultural Policy, and Innovation at the German Ministry for Development/BMZ. Prior to this, Mr Lesch was Head of German-Egyptian Development Cooperation in Cairo for four years, from 2010 to 2014 he was Press Officer of the BMZ and before that Country Director for Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus.

Julia Christian is Cocoa and Forests Campaigner at Fern. She is a lawyer trained in the UK and US who has worked on forest policy with local NGOs in West and Central Africa, Central America and Europe. Her current focus is on the EU-West Africa cocoa trade.

Mardi Minangsari is the president of Kaoem Telapak, an environmental NGO based in Bogor, Indonesia. She also works with the UK office of the Environmental Investigation Agency. She has over 20 years’ experience in illegal logging and forest governance issues. She coordinated Indonesian civil society groups working in FLEGT issues and has been actively involved in developing and improving Indonesian Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS). Since 2016, she has been actively involved in the initiative to reform Indonesia’s palm oil sector.

Obed Osuwu-Addai is Co-Founder and Managing Campaigner at EcoCare, Ghana. He is a member of Forest Watch Ghana. In the past he has worked as a Programs Officer at Civic Response, as a Project Officer at Tropenbos International Ghana, as well as a Technical Officer at the Ghana Forestry Commission.

Maria Weimer (moderator) is associate professor of EU law and regulation at the Amsterdam Law School, University of Amsterdam, a senior researcher at the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance and at the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies. She works and has published extensively on EU regulation in the field of health and environmental protection. She is currently carrying out a research project funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) on the legitimacy of EU unilateral regulation to fight global deforestation and on EU regulation of sustainable supply chains.