Natural disasters prompted by climate change are putting pressure on EU forest resilience, but the bloc’s Forest Monitoring Law could help forest owners, researchers, policymakers and civil society address these risks.
Forests, trees and wood have always played a critical role for humanity and our future is intertwined with theirs. The coming years will reveal whether we manage to restore a most sustainable relationship with them and secure healthy forests for future generations.
Forests play a vital role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. They act as carbon sinks and preserve biodiversity and ecosystems. Yet, climate change is increasingly causing extreme weather conditions, and damages such as wildfires, windstorms and floods are harming forests all over Europe.
Austria's agriculture and economy ministers have urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to postpone the implementation of the new EU anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR), scheduled for January 2025, according to a letter seen by Euractiv.
French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to plant one billion trees in France over 10 years, but environmentalists and researchers question whether this programme will achieve its stated biodiversity and climate objectives.
Portuguese eucalyptus forests are helping to replace plastics, but as the country's climate warms up, this highly flammable tree is a growing threat to people and biodiversity.
As EU policymakers prepare to announce the specifics of the 2040 target, there is a clear risk the EU’s climate ambition could be undermined through a poor design, write Eadbhard Pernot, Mark Preston Aragones and Fabiola De Simone.
While only around a third of the world’s rivers “remain free flowing,” according to campaign group International Rivers, the situation is worse in Europe, where the number of ‘wild’ or free-flowing rivers can likely be counted on both hands.
In an interview with Euractiv, French Secretary of State for Biodiversity Sarah El Haïry reflected on the EU's progress this year, following the COP28 summit in Dubai, the adoption of France's national biodiversity strategy as well as the EU's pesticides directive and nature restoration law.
While rapid and significant reductions in emissions must be the cornerstone of climate action, permanent carbon removals will have a role to play to achieve zero-net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, argue Dr. Felix Schenuit and Martin Birk Rasmussen.
Ireland has seen a dramatic decrease in its woodlands, from trees covering 80% of the country 6,000 years ago to 1% by the end of the 19th century and around 11% today, according to Ireland's Agriculture and Food Development Authority.
In the run-up to this week's vote in the European Parliament on the draft packaging waste regulation, a Euractiv event looked at the impact of packaging on Europe's forests. Here are the key points.
The European Commission on Wednesday (22 November) proposed a forest monitoring system that will use satellites to track threats such as climate change-fuelled wildfires and illegal logging.
Restoring and connecting forests through community-driven action can capture up to 226 gigatonnes of carbon, roughly equivalent to a third of what humans have released since the beginning of the industrial era, according to new research.
Businesses remain sceptical that a new EU certification framework for carbon removals is sufficient to generate a self-sustaining market, arguing Brussels must do more to make removing carbon from the atmosphere financially attractive.
Environmental groups are taking the UK government to court on Monday (13 November) over plans to spend billions on Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), a technology aimed at removing CO2 from the atmosphere that is also being promoted by the European Union.
The European Union does not only want to slash its greenhouse gas emissions but also boost the amount of carbon it removes from the atmosphere in order to prevent drastic global warming – and healthy forests have a big part to play in this.
While big producers of palm oil, cocoa or coffee are ready to implement EU’s newly adopted anti-deforestation regulation, governments in Malaysia and Indonesia say more time is needed for small producers to meet the EU's bureaucratic requirements.
Pastureland has been included in the category of agricultural land eligible for afforestation using funds from the recovery plan, according to an emergency decree issued by the Romanian government on Thursday, which “rectifies” parliament’s earlier removal of pastureland as an eligible category.
European Parliament lawmakers voted Tuesday (24 October) to uphold plans to certify carbon removals in the European Union, paving the way for new technologies to suck CO2 directly from the atmosphere.
In a show of diplomatic strength, the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland have invited EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen to visit their country's forests and refrain from overburdening the sector ahead of an election year.
Focusing restoration efforts on degraded forests can deliver accelerated climate and biodiversity benefits because these areas retain elements of their natural ecology and can recover quickly, write Janice Weatherley-Singh and Tim Rayden.
As the EU shifts sustainable agricultural practices for the protection of nature and biodiversity, it ought to still look out for the small-scale producers and their livelihoods, writes Jonathan Mockshell.
Three environmental NGOs have urged the EU Commission to enforce a memorandum on Romania's illegal logging in an open letter addressed to Commissioner Sinkevičius.
