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11 September 2020 the Netherlands
100+ NGOs launch #Together4Forests urging EU action --- Fires raging in the Amazon are started deliberately to make way for large-scale industrial agriculture – and EU market demand for commodities produced on former-forest land is adding fuel to the fires. Globally, the EU is responsible for over 10% of forest destruction through its consumption of commodities like meat, dairy, soy for animal feed, palm oil, coffee and cacao.
11 September 2020 the Netherlands
Drylands occupy more than a third of all the world’s land, most now degraded or severely degraded. Drylands are also home to an equivalent proportion of humanity, and a disproportionate number of the world’s poorest people. But with the right support, they is also much potential to rapidly reduce poverty, increase ecological and economic resilience, and climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration.
02 September 2020 Suriname
With a forest cover of 93%, Suriname is the most forested country on the globe. Its forests are home to five Indigenous Peoples, who have been living there since long before the country became occupied by Europeans. Next to the Indigenous Peoples, Suriname’s forests are populated by Maroon communities who mostly live along the rivers. They are descendants of enslaved Africans who fled the colonial Dutch plantations and established independent communities deep in the interior rainforests, where they could not be found. Today, there are a total of six Maroon tribes, spread over hundreds of villages, making up almost 14% of the population. Both the Indigenous and Maroon communities depend on the forest for their food, medicines and construction material. Also, they are increasingly involved in commercial timber extraction.
02 September 2020 Liberia
With around 4.3 million hectares of lowland tropical forest, Liberia is the most forested country in West Africa. Liberia’s forestry sector contributes significantly to the national economy. Moreover, about one-third of the population lives in forested areas, many of whom depend on forests for their livelihoods. The government has developed a legal framework, which recognises customary rights of local communities to access and manage forests. Crucial in this has been the Community Rights Law of 2009.
09 July 2020 General
In recent years, the call for the legal recognition of community rights to forests has been growing stronger. It is put forward as the key to combatting deforestation, climate change and poverty. The formalization of community forest rights has a better chance of achieving those objectives, when the rights are adapted to local needs, and accompanied with support for livelihood development.
30 June 2020 the Netherlands
In 2019, a broad coalition of European NGOs campaigned for legally binding measures by the EU to curb deforestation linked to the production, consumption and import of agro-commodities (so-called “imported deforestation”). As a result, in January 2020 the European Parliament adopted a motion calling for robust regulatory measures.